The hottest marketing trend right now (summer 2024) 🎢

Hook your users with hyper-casual games

In 2016, Toggl (a time-tracking software company) tried something new:

🕹️ They launched “Startup Simulator” - a simple web game where players build a startup while avoiding employee churn and bankruptcy. The game perfectly captured the pains and struggles of Toggl’s target audience: startup founders & entrepreneurs.

The result → Massive engagement from their core users! 📊

Welcome to the world of “Mini-Games Marketing”.

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🔥 The “Mini-Games Marketing” Trend:

Fast forward to today, and it seems like everyone is jumping on the mini-game bandwagon:

• LinkedIn has launched a series of puzzle games that provide a short mental break at work. (See the above screenshot)

• YouTube introduced ‘Playables’ - interactive ads that let users play a mini-game before watching a video.

• Even Netflix got into gaming - with mini-games based on their popular shows.

• The New York Times is mostly a gaming company now - people spend more time on their games compared to their news! 🤯

We couldn’t resist either:

At Wiz, we launched “Wizlympics” - just in time for the 2024 Paris Olympics. In our cloud security mini-game, players become the cute little Wiz Sensor, collecting real cloud services like AWS S3 and EC2 while avoiding fake ones.

It’s not only fun but also educational! 🤓

💖 Why Mini-Games Work:

So why are mini-games suddenly the biggest marketing trend?

1. 🕰️ Crazy engagement: Games keep users on your site or app longer than any other content. Period. That’s wild for SEO.

2. 🧩 Brand love: Themed games (like our cloud security trivia) beautifully prove your expertise and make your audience feel ‘seen’ and understood.

3. 🔄 Viral potential: Great games spread organically. Players share high scores, challenge friends, and talk about them on social.

4. 😍 Memorable marketing: It’s different! Games stand out in a sea of white papers, e-books and webinars.

5. 💬 FOMO retention: Drop new challenges daily (like Wordle and LinkedIn), and people will get hooked. It’s also a great conversation starter. Miss a day, miss out!

🟢 ‘Mini-Games Marketing’: A Tactical Guide

Now, you might be thinking — “How do I create a mini-game for my company?”

Don’t worry, you don’t need to reinvent the wheel. The trick is to take an existing game model and twist it to fit your audience → with their specific lingo, pains, and inside jokes.

Here's a step-by-step guide:

🎨 Step 1: Steal like an artist

Find a proven game mechanic and twist it. Here are my top games for inspiration:

1. 🟩 Wordle: The classic word-guessing game.

2. 🏠 Housle: Guess the house price by the photo.

3. 🎬 Framed: Identify the movie by analyzing a series of screenshots.

4. 🗺️ Worldle: Guess the country based on its silhouette.

5. 🧇 Waffle: Shuffle the letters until they form valid words in a grid.

6. 🦖 Chrome’s Dino Game: The ultimate time-killer when your internet connection fails. It was our inspo for Wizlympics!

7. 🪢 Knotwords: A fusion of sudoku and crosswords

8. 🔗 Connections: Find the common thread linking four seemingly unrelated words.

9. 📎 Universal Paperclips: Manage a paperclip factory and aim for global domination.

10. ⛳ Coffee Golf: A new mini-golf course, daily.

11. 🎸 Bandle: Guess the song by listening to individual instrument tracks.

12. 🏝️ Travle: A geography game about bordering countries.

13. 📺 Episode: Test your TV show knowledge by identifying series from still frames.

14. 👑 Queens / Pinpoint / Crossclimb: LinkedIn’s new brain-teasing games (I really liked Queens)

15. ⚾ Immaculate Grid: Identify athletes from various sports in a grid-based quiz.

16. ➕ Summle: Arrange numbers and operators to create valid mathematical expressions.

17. 🗣️ CineQuote: Guess the film by deciphering iconic dialogue, one line at a time.

18. 🕵️ Murdle: Solve a murder mystery.

19. 🧶 Strands: Uncover hidden words.

20. 🌐 GeoGrid: Guess the country.

21. 🍿 Cinematrix: Guess the movie.

22. 📖 Pedantle: Uncover the Wikipedia entry by finding words on a redacted page.

23. ❓ Contexto: Guess a word by guessing related terms.

24. ⚽ Football Bingo: Test your soccer knowledge.

25. 📊 Box Office Game: Predict the highest-grossing films.

26. 📄 Untitled Game: It’s a mysterious blank page. You figure out what to do next.

Action plan: Pick one of those games and re-create it. If you don’t have the resources to develop the game in-house — outsource it to Fiverr/Upwork devs.

🗣️ Step 2: Make it suuuuuuuuper specific

Inject your audience’s DNA into your game:

• Use industry-specific jargon in the buttons / story / gameplay / graphics

• Reference inside jokes and famous pain points

• Create characters based on industry stereotypes (but make it cute)

Example: Our Wizlympics game uses our sensor as the character and real cloud services as collectibles. Players instantly feel in-the-know.

Vicarius’ CVE Invaders is another great example - you fight against CVEs (cybersecurity vulnerabilities)

🎣 Step 3: Hook users

Make it impossible to play just once:

• Daily challenges (the Wordle effect)

• Progressive difficulty

• Unlockable content (that’s where your whitepapers belong)

• Leaderboards that reset weekly (regular FOMO)

Wild card: Tie game achievements to real-world rewards. “Beat today’s challenge for 10% off our SaaS plan” (or: swag packages delivered to their homes)

🕵️ Step 4: Make it worth their time

Find a way to educate:

• Toggl's “Startup Simulator” teaches founders how to cope with extreme situations

• LinkedIn’s puzzles make you feel smarter

• Our “Wizlympics” game educates on unknown cloud services

The goal: Players should feel productive, even while procrastinating.

♻️ Step 5: Design for virality & shareability

Build viral loops into your game:

• One-click social sharing of scores/achievements

• Challenges to ‘beat my score’

• Tiered referral rewards (Invite 5 friends, unlock the secret level)

• Seasonal events that create urgency (Christmas Craze - this week only)

Power play: Partner with thought leaders in your industry for limited-time character skins or levels. Tell them they inspired you to make this game in the first place.

🍼 Step 6: KEEP IT SIMPLE!

Remember — you’re not building the next Fortnite. Aim for:

• 2-3 minute play sessions

• One-thumb playability

• Clear, addictive core loop

• On-brand visuals

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🎯 My challenge for you: Pick a popular mini-game from the list above. How could you remix it for your industry? The wilder the idea, the better :)

See you next week!

-Tom

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P.S. Stuck? Play your favorite game for 10 minutes. You know, for ״research״ 😉