The Key to Strong Game Launches: Tracking Attribution and Brand Health

In the early phases of a pre-launch marketing campaign, tracking performance can feel like navigating without a compass. With no sales data to act as a “point of truth,” marketers face the challenge of understanding campaign performance and making data-driven decisions. Yet, early insights are crucial to building momentum and refining strategies for a successful launch. In this blog post, we explore how brand health measurement and organic attribution can help marketers track and optimize their campaigns, even before the first sale.

The Challenge: No Clear “Point of Truth”

During pre-launch campaigns, the absence of direct sales or conversions can make it hard to gauge effectiveness. However, marketers still need to answer critical questions:

  • Is the campaign reaching the right audience?
  • Are people engaging with the content?
  • How can performance be quantified?

To address these questions, marketers can rely on alternative reporting strategies, such as brand health insights and organic attribution, to create meaningful KPIs that guide their efforts.

Leveraging Brand Health Insights

Brand health measurement provides a macro-level view of how your campaign is influencing awareness, perception, and engagement with your brand. Here are a few key areas to focus on:

  1. Awareness and Recall: Are people starting to recognize your brand? Surveys, social listening, and share-of-voice metrics can indicate whether your campaign is generating buzz.
  2. Perception and Sentiment: How do audiences feel about your game or brand? Tools like sentiment analysis and online reviews provide qualitative insights into how your campaign is resonating.
  3. Engagement Trends: Tracking organic social media engagement, mentions, and interactions can help you assess the depth of audience interest.

By understanding these metrics, you’ll gain a clearer picture of how well your campaign is laying the groundwork for a successful launch.

Organic Attribution: Landing Pages and Wishlist Buttons

Organic attribution takes a more granular approach, focusing on user behavior to measure campaign effectiveness. One powerful method is to use your landing page data and wishlist tracking. Here’s how:

Measuring “Good” Traffic with CPQ

One way to evaluate the quality of traffic from awareness campaigns is through a metric called Cost Per Quality User (CPQ). Unlike standard click-through rates or impressions, CPQ focuses on users who meet specific engagement criteria, such as:

  • Spending a certain amount of time on the landing page.
  • Visiting key sections, such as the game trailer or feature list.
  • Returning to the site within a set period.

This helps you distinguish high-quality traffic from casual visitors and optimize your campaign spend accordingly.

Wishlist Button Attribution

Another valuable approach is tracking the “wishlist now” button on your landing page. Here’s why it matters:

  • Users who add your game to their wishlist are highly engaged and likely to convert once the game is available.
  • By analyzing which campaigns drive the most wishlist clicks, you can identify high-performing channels and creatives.

There is also a strong correlation between wishlist activity on your landing page and wishlist additions on platforms like Steam. While there is a correlation between wishlists and actual sales, it can vary significantly. Wishlist additions indicate strong interest, but they are not always a direct predictor of sales performance. By attributing wishlist clicks to specific campaigns, you gain valuable insights to refine your strategy, though they should be assessed alongside other key performance metrics for a comprehensive view.

Building a Foundation for Success

By combining brand health insights with organic attribution, marketers can create a clear picture of campaign performance, even in the absence of direct sales. These methods not only provide data to optimize ongoing efforts but also lay the groundwork for a successful launch.

How TRACKS Can Help

Managing brand health metrics and organic attribution can be complex, especially when juggling multiple campaigns and platforms. That’s where TRACKS comes in. Designed specifically for gaming marketers, TRACKS provides tools to measure brand health and analyse attribution with ease. From CPQ tracking to wishlist attribution, TRACKS simplifies the process of turning raw data into actionable insights.

Want to learn more about how TRACKS can empower your marketing efforts? Get in touch and see how our platform helps you make data-driven decisions at every stage of your campaign journey.

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