What Fortnite can teach you about content marketing
Richard Ashby
Founder of Dotkumo and FrameLyst. Specialist in digital marketing, paid media strategy, planning and activation, CGI animation projects, and video editing for large ecommerce brands, B2B and the private sector.
Part video game, part cultural phenomenon, Fortnite recently celebrated its first anniversary, and has over 125 million active players. The game regularly brings in over $300 million revenue per month for its makers Epic Games, and attracts an engaged worldwide audience. Let's take a look at some of the reasons why, and how we might apply these principles to our content marketing and social media activity.
Tell a compelling story
Although the core gameplay of Fortnite is a competitive Battle Royale shoot-em-up with players fighting and building shelters to survive on an island, the structure of the game is fairly innovative.
Gameplay takes place across multiple seasons, in a nod to box set television. Within the seasons are a series of events including meteor strikes, time travel and constant references to popular culture.
Subtle reveals and 'leaks' across social media create buzz and speculation in the gaming community. A recent stunt to publicise the release of season 5 led to life-size game objects including a fast food sign and police car being left at a random location in the Californian desert.
To bring this back to content marketing it can be helpful to ask the following:
- What story am I trying to tell?
- How will it inspire, delight, inform or entertain my audience?
- Is my content compelling enough for people to share with their friends?
- Does it help build excitement and anticipation? This is particularly important when creating teaser campaigns.
- Will it be effective in driving actions or conversion activity?
Listen to your community
Epic Games have a very active team of community managers who maintain an open dialogue with the players. This results in regular new game concepts, features and the team respond directly to criticism.
When developing a content strategy, it's vital to listen, be responsive to feedback and start an open dialogue with your audience.
Keep things fresh
Fortnite adds new game modes and functionality on a daily basis, and has an interesting revenue model.
The game is free to play on any platform, with players given the option to pay to access new outfits, gain additional challenges via battle passes and even purchase dance moves (Emotes). These are hugely popular, and have reached a worldwide audience as professional footballers frequently reference them in goal celebrations.
Fortnite offers a steady drip-feed of new content, with exclusivity being maintained by only making outfits available for a limited period of time.
For content marketing creating a simple schedule can help provide better focus, and ensure a steady stream of high quality content.
Iterate constantly
Another way Fortnite boosts player engagement is via constant updates to the game, and introducing regular innovative features.
Follow this approach with your content marketing, and continue to explore new content types, ad formats and technology.
Kill failures quickly
Not everything will work, so game features in Fortnite that are buggy or cause issues are shut down rapidly. Shopping cart vehicles were introduced, shelved due to negative feedback and then reintroduced with improvements.
If something isn't working analyse your data, and ask yourself if it's the right type of content or platform for your audience.
To provide an example, if you are trying to sell insurance policies then Snapchat video ads might not be the most natural fit.
Plug in the zeitgeist
Fortnite introduces topical cultural references frequently, and successfully monetises them. This could be as simple as referencing dance crazes like the dab, or bringing in time limited locations such as football pitches during the recent World Cup.
You know something has traction when it's featured on Radio 4 documentaries, and even formed part of a job interview process at a French marketing agency.
When developing and executing your content strategy always keep your finger on the pulse of what's going on. A simple way of doing this is monitoring social media activity using tools like Buzz Sumo, Facebook IQ, Twitter Analytics or visiting Google Trends to see what's popular.