<p>In today's competitive digital marketplace, you can no longer count on the rewards from big budget ad campaigns on mass-market platforms. You might still raise awareness of your brand, but that's a vanity metric at this point. To impact sales figures for your latest release or product update, you need to get more creative and dig deeper with your campaign.</p>
<p>Fortunately, the internet's capacity for fragmenting your audience carries a similar strength in magnifying all you can learn about them. By staying in tune with your fans and fostering a sense of community, you can take your marketing much further than an ad buy would have otherwise provided.</p>
<p>This white paper will offer a look at the insights we've used to create immersive digital experiences that further the connection between brands and their fans. You'll learn:</p>
<ul>
<li>Why you no longer need your brand to conquer the world. You just need to satisfy the audience that matters most.</li>
<li>How learning all you can about the biggest fans of your brand can deliver undiscovered insights into the factors contributing to its appeal. And, in the process, extend your brand's reach into new communities.</li>
<li>Why the future of marketing will further blur the lines between your brand and its fans.</li>
<li>How an ad can and should function as entertainment.</li>
<li>The importance of giving your fans the right tools to share their experiences with your brand.</li>
<li>How a growing fan community can take your brand to unexpected new heights.</li>
</ul>
<div class="insight-upgrade"></div>


The amount of digital marketing channels available to your gaming brand is dizzying. Discover how a laser focus on your audience can provide a clear roadmap.

How to find your true audience when marketing games online

To ensure youth marketing success, create digital experiences your fans will never forget

Don't worry about which is the right digital channel to market your brand to a young
audience. Focus on the connection with your brand's fans instead. Download our whitepaper now to learn how. Enter your email for the link.

Thank you!

Get our whitepaper on how to market your brand to a young audience

Whitepaper - 7/2021 - Connecting Brands To Fans


“If you’re not growing, you’re dying.”

Voices as varied as Tony Robbins and William S. Burroughs have expressed some form of this idea. And from the perspective of your brand, who could argue? Growth is essential to any business. However, as your brand looks to increase sales, you face two choices:

Do you double down on your current audience? You could always try and capture a bigger share of your existing market, or sell current consumers more products.

Or do you pursue an entirely new audience and find the growth you need by expanding your fanbase?

Both directions have merit, and uncovering the right course for your brand requires a blend of art and science. But you don’t need a high-priced consultant to unpack reams of data to identify new demographics with potential interest in your brand.

What you do need is to look at your brand identity and dedicate time to discovering where its values overlap with any audience you pursue. Otherwise, any money you dedicate toward audience expansion is effectively dead-on-arrival.

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## Core questions any audience expansion effort needs to answer

Expanding your audience isn’t as simple as turning on a tap to produce more sales. If you want to generate more revenue from your current fans, you need to consider three factors:

1. **Satisfaction:** How likely are they to stick with your product?
2. **Likelihood to recommend:** Are your fans talking with friends about your products?
3. **Total addressable market (TAM):** Does your brand have the potential to expand from its current sales reach?

Targeting your marketing toward [building a lasting connection with fans is critical](/insights/how-do-you-build-a-generational-brand). Even the most popular brands can quickly fall out of favor as its audience ages or as new trends arrive. Before long, you need to consider new areas of expansion.

Before attempting to expand into a new audience, you should understand the gulf that exists between your data and a successful campaign. [An assortment of software tools](https://blog.hubspot.com/service/social-listening-tools) and trend reports can aggregate anonymized details to indicate a huge TAM that’s potentially open to your business.

Imagine opening reports that indicate Quebec loves your brand, and so does Central America. Great news, but what should you do with this information? Numbers aren’t enough to develop a message that will connect with consumers. The larger question for your brand is, once you’ve identified the right audience, how do you reach them?

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## Understand a new audience’s needs before expanding your marketing priorities

Whether your brand settles on pursuing an audience of college-educated women gamers or [a broad pivot to young fans](/insights/marketing-tips-young-target-audience), finding the right creative is often the trickiest part. Too often, brands will get caught up planning how to adjust their offerings in order to capture a new market. For example, think of how many brands adopted “EXTREME” logos and gaudy color schemes to court the youth market in the X-Games era.

Obviously, this approach very often comes off as disingenuous. You don’t want to be the brand whose message comes off as [a convoluted version of introducing yourself with, “How do you do, fellow kids?”](/insights/4-tips-better-youth-marketing) You want to identify areas where your brand’s products organically overlap with what your audience is looking for.

Sometimes, brands get lucky. The shoe company Crocs was effectively dead with defiantly chunky, plastic shoes with limited appeal confined to kayakers and gardeners. Then, the brand started incorporating plastic charms into the shoes that allowed for personalization, and the idea took off among a new generation.

They have since leaned into this renewed popularity as their data continued to demonstrate the brand was experiencing an unlikely renaissance. But Crocs remain the same shoe even as they found a new audience.

Instead of attempting to reinvent your brand’s identity to suit a new demographic, your brand should look to groups with values that overlap with your brand. Then, you can uncover their motivations and angle your unique selling proposition toward its ability to satisfy those needs.

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#### One-on-one research is key to successful audience expansion

Getting to know your audience is crucial before leaping into a new market. You need to dedicate time and energy to listening on social media channels to understand your audience’s needs.

But along with social listening, you also need to examine your target demographic with one-on-one research. For example, we worked with a major gaming brand on an initiative to expand its reach among young women. We looked at the core message of the brand and tried to find areas of overlap with the problems this new audience was looking to resolve.

Along with applying social listening to develop early insights, we interviewed women in the target demographic. We never asked direct questions about the brand, but we talked about their needs to overcome anxiety and claim “me time.”

We focused the resulting campaign on the way the company’s portable console and its current titles allow for quiet moments of escape and relaxation. We didn’t encourage the brand to change, or develop new titles that could appeal to women. The brand’s story remained consistent while tilting slightly to accommodate a new perspective.

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![](/assets/cms/entertainment-brand-audience-expansion-strategies/wtc-site-insight-05-29-2023-sub-image-4-2x.jpg)

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## Know your brand before making a move to a new audience

Targeting a new audience requires more than building a full understanding of who they are. You also need to know your brand and how it’s perceived in the marketplace. The right outside marketing agency will ask the right questions of stakeholders and deliver a vital, objective perspective of your audience and messaging.

As your brand considers its many options to pursue growth, you can’t afford to rely solely on promising data and undercooked research. At We The Collective, we can help you uncover the deeper motivations and behaviors of your target audience by asking the right questions. Before you decide where to spend your advertising dollars on a new audience, [we should talk](/contact).


Successful audience expansion for entertainment brands requires more than market research. Learn how to uncover deeper consumer insights to grow your brand.

3 strategies to expand your entertainment brand’s audience

Look beyond the numbers before your brand pursues a new audience


Phew. Thank goodness the pandemic is over and it’s back to business as usual.

We don’t mean to sound glib. Obviously, we still need to do our part to tamp down the recent variants and keep the most vulnerable in our communities safe. And eventually, the pandemic-driven precautions that upended how we live and work will end. Honest.

But all the forecasts about the changes at the other side of the pandemic — like [this hopeful article](/insights/long-term-brand-strategy-post-pandemic "How to navigate the market changes coming for your brand once the pandemic is over") — remain premature. A post-pandemic marketplace has yet to materialize, and some of the shifts to our marketplace may never fully revert to “normal.”

So where does this leave your brand? If there's a lesson to be learned from the pandemic, it’s the futility in trying to predict the future. To effectively reach your audience, you need to be less worried about anticipating what’s next and focus on a message that’s built to last.

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## Marketing to human emotions is pandemic-proof

Needless to say, we’re still waiting for the arrival of some virus-free second coming of the Roaring ‘20s. So far, [consumer spending has been up](https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2021-us-spending-recovery-inflation/ "How Covid Turbocharged the American Consumer"), and the [global economy remains in a tentative rebound](https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/strategy-and-corporate-finance/our-insights/economic-conditions-outlook-2021 "Economic conditions outlook, 2021"). But until the pandemic is really behind us, you can expect an ongoing climate of uncertainty.

Consequently, you need to tap into what your game, digital experience, or any other product is really offering your audience. Details like groundbreaking graphics engines may impress the media. But for your brand to take root with its audience, [your marketing has to establish a lasting emotional connection](/insights/uncovering-emotional-marketing-value "How tapping into customer emotions yields better sales for your brand").

The marketplace will always remain in flux. However, you can establish a solid foundation for your brand by focusing on how it enriches someone’s life. Then, you can promote those insights in a meaningful way. There’s always time to be pithy and sarcastic, especially if you’re targeting a young audience. Focusing on the human-to-human connections your products provide will allow your brand to deliver a message that’s consistent and pandemic-proof.

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## Post-pandemic changes are less vital than what’s here to stay

Instead of workshopping how your marketing will change once the pandemic ends, your brand should focus on what remains unchanged. While you can’t reuse the same campaign forever, [message testing, research, and customer insights are critical](/insights/marketing-during-a-pandemic-means-embracing-proven-tactics-and-change "Pandemic marketing: expect change and focus on core tactics") to your success.

However, for as much value that’s available in the fundamentals of your marketing, aspects of the marketplace have been altered for the foreseeable future. Whether the pandemic lasts for another six months or, somehow, six years, the following developments will likely remain in place.

#### Remote or hybrid work continues to impact needs for family connection

For anyone working in an office, I’m sure you scrambled to set up remote workplaces, adopt new tools, and find a balance between home and work life. Now that so many have adapted to working from home, the workforce most likely will become divided.

People who have missed the creative energy of work interactions will eagerly return to the office. Others, especially those with long commutes, will aim to stay home. Given that a hybrid work model [appears likely to continue after the pandemic](https://hbr.org/2021/08/which-hybrid-work-model-is-best-for-your-business "Which Hybrid Work Model Is Best for Your Business?"), parents will be looking for ways to spend time with their families.

After all, working from home may eliminate commute times, but it still constitutes hours spent removed from loved ones. For example, if your brand has a game that will allow parents to connect with their children after work, you have to highlight those moments as a core benefit.

#### Online connections will endure for a gaming audience

In the early part of 2021, we saw a hunger for real-life experiences [as a potential aftershock of the pandemic](/insights/long-term-brand-strategy-post-pandemic "How to navigate the market changes coming for your brand once the pandemic is over"). After all, with another year of cautions around dining in restaurants, going to concerts, or even attending birthday parties, who wouldn’t hunger for careless, real-world interactions we took for granted years ago?

While our forecast may have been premature, society seems unlikely to move on from tools that allow virtual connection regardless of what lies ahead. Remote gameplay, live-streaming apps and video conferencing may have once been technologies adopted by so-called power users. But now they have effectively gone mainstream.

Even when your customers can safely return to visiting friends and playing games in-person, online play has now become routine. Your audience will still look for ways to connect and keep playing online even when alternatives become available.

#### Communicate that your brand understands the needs of its audience

Focusing on the emotional core of what your brand is offering [allows you to market to a moment](/insights/youth-marketing-find-the-moment "Form a lasting connection with your audience by marketing to a moment") rather than offering a simple hard sell. If you’re targeting a younger audience, marketing a moment isn’t just a more ethical approach. It also forms a more lasting connection with your brand.

For however much longer the pandemic lasts, focusing your brand’s message toward real, human emotions communicates that your brand understands the current situation. Instead of relying on trite messages such as “We’re all in this together,” a campaign that underscores how your brand will allow families to spend time together is more meaningful. And, as the products you offer succeed in these goals, you’ll form a relationship that’s built to last.

#### Monitor current events but avoid trends

For brands, trends are dangerous.

If you’re not starting the trend, you’re following it. Once your campaign targeting the latest cultural shift launches, the situation has either changed or your audience has moved on. Remaining focused on human connection with your audience is simply an evergreen approach to marketing.

Ultimately, none of us has any idea what lies ahead for the pandemic. However, by remaining in tune with how your audience is feeling and what they’re talking about, you can deliver campaigns aligned with their needs. Even if your products only exist in the virtual world, keeping your marketing grounded in the real one is the clearest way forward.


Entertainment brands have been forced to consider the pandemic in their marketing, but there is a way to cut through the COVID noise and ensure you stand out.

To ensure youth marketing success, create digital experiences your fans will never forget

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