Many people still buy into the idea of actual "Viral Marketing" when it comes to their branded game. The fact is campaigns rarely go truly viral. Don't think you can put your game on your website, tell a few people and then wait for the whole world to find out about your game via word of mouth.
It's becoming more and more difficult to get your branded online game noticed. The internet is saturated with new virals on a daily basis. While it's essential to make your game stand out, both in terms of originality and quality, it's not enough to rely on factors out of your control to make the game a success.
It's essential to take responsibility for the success or failure of your campaign. Whenever executing a viral campaign, always assume the worst case scenario. If no one passes on your viral, you need to generate all the traffic yourself, otherwise you'll get little to no return on your investment. If you make this assumption even a few pass-ons will mean you always exceed your campaign goals.
Instead of waiting for people to come to your game, taking your game to the people is the answer. The main ways you will accomplish this are:
Any specialist online community forums that you may be an active member of can be a great place to tell people about your game.
Social Networking Sites
Sites such as Facebook and Myspace can be great places to tell your friends and contacts about your game. You could even get your developer to include a Facebook application for your game, so that people can add it to their profiles.
Online Games Portals
This is where the bulk of your game traffic will come from. There are hundreds of games portals that are always on the look out for quality free-to-use games for their site. This does require building a substantial database and submitting your game to as many sites as possible. Because the majority of these sites will host your game file themselves you don't even have to worry about bandwidth costs for most of the game traffic these generate.
Your Mailing List
This is another important part of the distribution process. The bigger your list the better. There are also a couple of good free public mailing lists that allow subscribers to post details of their viral releases.
When distributing your game always proceed with caution. It's important to be open and honest about what you are doing and always avoid spam. People don't like being tricked and there are a few well documented cases of viral marketing campaigns backfiring due to underhand execution. Apart from this, the time needed to build the database of contacts needed to successfully distribute a branded game mean it's probably more cost effective to hire a professional. Many branded online game developers offer a distribution service after completion, it's always worth asking about this before choosing a developer, otherwise you may end up with an expensive game gathering dust on your website and providing little return on your investment.
