Marketing to Adult Males...

Most of my marketing management career has been spent targeting Adult Males ages 18 to 50.  I've got a quick rundown here of what I've done that has worked, and what has not worked.  If these tips help (or if you disagree/agree), I'd love to hear from you.  Reply Below or directly in twitter @hbomber or Facebook.

What Does NOT work:

1.  Boobs/Sex.   Unless you are selling one or the other of these, my experience is that it does not (by itself) work to sell your product.  There is a way to use sex appeal in your advertising, but it has to be somewhat subtle & connected.
2. Alcohol.  Similar to Boobs/Sex, it does not work unless it's exactly what you are selling.
3. Sports.  Similar to Alcohol, unless sports is the target, this does not work.
4. Lots of Words.  The more words, the less effective.
5. Branded Feature Words.  Branding your features is not a good strategy for this market. (or any market really).
6. Over-stated claims.  This just does not work; see right through it.

What HAS worked:

1. Honesty/Directness.  Being honest about what you have/don't have works.  People want to be informed, as fast as possible.
2. Clever Wordings.  Being clever can get attention with this group.
3. Good and Real photos/drawings of your products... if it involves women or boobs in some non-obvious way.. that's fine.  You get the idea... subtle.
4. Benefits & Features.  Being clear about what benefits and features of your product (in a brief way) works.
5. Value.  Explaining the value/savings/math behind your products works.
6. Passion.  Show the passion you/your team has for your products in whatever way makes sense... (yes, cool videos of you loving your products/using them works).

What works/doesn't work for you?

Marketing to Whales

In the gaming business, a Whale is defined as the 2nd or 3rd sigma of spenders.  This means the 95th (or 99th) Percentile of your spenders.  Depending on the game, this might represent a very significant portion of your total revenue (in a Whale dominate game).  Therefor, "marketing to whales" is a very important task/challenge.  My good friend Bart Bohn at AuManil have developed algorithms that help identify and monitor the Whales in your game... but the key question I have is, how do you EFFECTIVELY market to these whales?

The Whale challenges are:

1. How do we Identify Whales (AuManil has this solved! -Thanks! :))
2. How do we get ATTRACT new Whales to play our game? (Acquisition)
3. How do we get Whales who play to STAY in the game longer?  (Retention)
4. How do we get Whales who play to SPEND more? (Monetization)
5. How do we get Whales who have left to COME BACK?  (Re-acquisition)

I don't have all the answers, sadly.  Each of these are very hard...  I do have some ideas, and am constantly testing these ideas while running Marketing in the real game Dungeon Overlord.  Obviously, I can't share data or any big secrets, but I would love to hear from my friends/readers if they have any ideas on how to solve these problems.

Focusing on ATTRACTING new Whales; Facebook has some new "target" groups that let you supposedly target Whales with your ads.  Has anyone tried this yet?  I hope to try it out soon.

Targeting players of other similar games seems to work fairly well, but I wonder if "Bids" for ads effect weather or not we reach Whale players?

Thoughts?

Any ideas for the other Whale challenges?