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iCal Hospo Consulting
A hospitality consulting group headed by Ian Callahan of Adelaide, Australia

Pokemon Go is trending. Here’s how your business can benefit.

Whenever there’s a trend, there’s always a way to monetise that and bring value

“The game’s stupid” “I just don’t get what the big deal is”

Love the game or hate it, Pokemon Go is real and it’s smashing every record an app can smash.

The average user time is over 43 minutes per day which destroys snapchat, whatsapp and even instagram!

Just 5 days old it has become the fastest downloading app in the history of apps. It’s already been downloaded more than Tinder, and at the time this article was published its user base is only a fraction shy of Twitters entire user base. In America, a jaw dropping 60% of all Android users are using the app daily.

If you remember when Angry Birds went nuts and everyone was playing in their lunch breaks and on the bus, Pokemon Go is dominating that.

Pokemon Go is essentially the next evolution of “Real World Gaming” by Niantec. Niantec for those who don’t know is owned by Google’s parent company Alphabet. And if there’s one thing we know about Google, it’s that they understand market trends, data analysis and how to create a product that users en masse are going to adopt.

The game itself isn’t overly new. Released in 2012 and available in some 200 countires worldwide, Niantec’s pre-curser game Ingress helped develop a lot of the concepts employed in the game. And Niantec have learnt, polished, re-skinned and launched what was always set to be a highly addictive smartphone app.

But why’s all this important and how does it relate to my business?

Well, wherever there’s attention, and whenever there’s a trend, it’s quite likely you can leverage that popularity for your own customers.

At base premise you simply want to look at who your base customer is, and how they’re interacting with the app. If they don’t care and aren’t involved, then you should probably move along and not waste any more time on it. However if they are spending their valuable attention on it, then it’s definitely worth looking at if you can work a strategy to to leverage that attention.

Some practical ideas:

  • Create a social media campaign, encouraging users to involve Pokemon Go and your businesses brand in their content
  • Use intelligent hashtags. Either create a custom hashtag to track use, or leverage trending hashtags to get your posts extra reach. Or of course, both!
  • Create content centered around this trend (or any other trend for that matter). This could be clever instagram graphics, funny meme’s supporting or making fun of the trend, writing articles on medium! Just make sure whatever you create, that it’s relevant to your target customer and contains quality.
  • Content that compliments or contrasts your brand with or against the Pokemon Go brand will usually work best.
  • If your business is lucky enough to be a Pokéstop (or at least located near one), use that to your advantage. Offer incentives to your customer to come past and interact with your digital Pokéstop. This could be through social media, or set lures at key times and promote these times to attract visitors using the app to come past.

This list could go on forever, but the main point is try and utilise the trend to create engagement with your customers, and broaden your reach to find new customers also using the platform.

If you’ve had any success with marketing around the app or have any experiences to share please sing off in the comments below. I’d absolutely love to hear your thoughts!