Marketing to Cthullu fans

[Netvalar]

I noticed in "Laying the Foundations" that you talk about marketing to MMO players. I was just curious if it was feasible to market to cthulu fans??

I know one of the FB Cthulu pages has over 300k likes and you can focus a FB ad to just those people who like the page. What I don't know is if there would have any ROI that would make this worth while?

 

[Eugenio Anhithe Wilde]

Hey, @Netvalar!

I have done some marketing to Cthulhu fans through a mixture of facebook targeting, search marketing and display. Over the last two years I've pretty much been marketing to all kinds of demographics and interests with a mix of different types of ad approaches.

I'm quite analytical in my approach and I track all this data and work out the cost of acquisition for each player. I then try to drive this to be as low as possible by switching ads and approaches. So I track all the different campaigns I run and their conversions. I then simply drop the things that don't work and keep things that do. Over time we've got pretty good at having a low cost of acquisition (also meaning shorter ROI or payback period) so we now get daily sign ups that are more likely to stick around.

One of the things I found with targeting Cthulhu fans was that the cost was high and the conversions were quite low. Also from more qualitative feedback I think the Cthulhu Mythos community is very much into role playing and deep immersion with story lines and fan fiction. This is why the writing that DM does is so important. I think it is very difficult to package ourselves as a Cthulhu game and I think its more genuine to describe ourselves as a community within an MMO with a story line inspired by the Cthulhu Mythos.

I track a lot of data and over the past two years and our player retention has increased dramatically. This is a lot to do with the community. I think we have a pretty safe environment for new players that are more likely to stick around and decide if EU is for them. In the early days we would get very few sign ups and people would just login and disappear before they got to know the game this is all a lot better today. There's definitely more to do in this area particularly with missions and the new player experience on Monria overall but I'm quite relaxed about it all. If we can get a few players a day to sign up and some of them stick around for a while then we're making a positive contribution to EU overall.

Thanks for the question, I spend a lot of time behind the scenes on this and its good to bore someone new with this kind of stuff

Ant

 

[DarkMoonEnigma]

Thanks for taking the time Ant, you're definitely the go-to guy when it comes to what we've done over the past two years with marketing campaigns. I love that you are so calculated and methodical with how you approach it all, but also that you are deeply analytical with the results toward fostering better outcomes.

It's been a busy time recently for both of us, but I'm taking the remainder of this month to work on completing book #3 in our Cthulhu storyline series. It's the 16 chapters that Pinthas wrote on the beginning of Monria and I am half-way through with the editing before Anny and I convert it into PDF book format with the graphics for downloading.

I will then get back to book #4, A Surprising Kipling/Core Connection, and that one should go more quickly (hopefully) because I will be writing and not editing. Editing someone else's work is a careful process because you don't want to disrupt the author's creative content or storyline flow. It has to remain authentic. Pinthas is a very creative storyteller, and I want to make sure I do his work justice before we publish this 3rd book.

We are adapting the Cthulhu Mythos into our own Moon theme, but it's not something you want to unleash on everyone all at once because it's a complicated family tree, and we want to employ the role-playing aspect by engaging our community members as much as possible and give them an opportunity to be a part of our evolution.

I think this year you will see not only the expansion of our Cthulhu-themed storyline, but also how it inspires our ongoing development to make the Monria experience the best possible. It may not all unfold as quickly as we would like it to, but hang in there and you will see how we work this.

On another note ... we try to be as visible as possible, but please know that there is a lot of work going on behind the scenes, and we make the effort to engage with the community as much as possible. You may see me more than Ant because I manage the community and look after our Monrian Born, but when it comes to the fun stuff, we will always be front and center. I think Ant is already working on the St Patrick's Day event in March because that's our biggest event of the year, and that takes a lot of prep work before we get there.

I try to do a bit of storyline leading up to our events, and recently, Lee Negated Dokken and his Esoteric Order of Dagon society have stepped up in a special role-playing engagement which we appreciate. This order is very much a part of the Cthulhu lore and will continue to be showcased in future storyline.

Stay tuned.

 

[Netvalar]

Hey, @Netvalar!

I have done some marketing to Cthulhu fans through a mixture of facebook targeting, search marketing and display. Over the last two years I've pretty much been marketing to all kinds of demographics and interests with a mix of different types of ad approaches.

I'm quite analytical in my approach and I track all this data and work out the cost of acquisition for each player. I then try to drive this to be as low as possible by switching ads and approaches. So I track all the different campaigns I run and their conversions. I then simply drop the things that don't work and keep things that do. Over time we've got pretty good at having a low cost of acquisition (also meaning shorter ROI or payback period) so we now get daily sign ups that are more likely to stick around.

One of the things I found with targeting Cthulhu fans was that the cost was high and the conversions were quite low. Also from more qualitative feedback I think the Cthulhu Mythos community is very much into role playing and deep immersion with story lines and fan fiction. This is why the writing that DM does is so important. I think it is very difficult to package ourselves as a Cthulhu game and I think its more genuine to describe ourselves as a community within an MMO with a story line inspired by the Cthulhu Mythos.

I track a lot of data and over the past two years and our player retention has increased dramatically. This is a lot to do with the community. I think we have a pretty safe environment for new players that are more likely to stick around and decide if EU is for them. In the early days we would get very few sign ups and people would just login and disappear before they got to know the game this is all a lot better today. There's definitely more to do in this area particularly with missions and the new player experience on Monria overall but I'm quite relaxed about it all. If we can get a few players a day to sign up and some of them stick around for a while then we're making a positive contribution to EU overall.

Thanks for the question, I spend a lot of time behind the scenes on this and its good to bore someone new with this kind of stuff

Ant

I actually didn't find this boring at all, have to try harder to bore me with new information for my brain to soak up I enjoy it.