What the Civilization series teaches us about digital marketing

The original Sid Meier’s Civilization was one of the first PC games I owned; I played it obsessively as a child and, along with the original Age of Empires, it firmly cemented a love of both history and strategy games which continues to this day.

I have played every single main series Civilization game and have undoubtedly poured thousands of hours into them. During that time I have built many empires, had a good portion of them nuked by Gandhi and learnt a lot. In school I may have learnt about Egypt, the World Wars and Elizabethan England and movies may have taught me about Rome and the Greeks, but it was Civilization that led me to learn about the Mayans, the Songhai, the Sumerian’s and countless others.

Civ is a game that leaves you with more than just a thirst for history and a deep distrust of anything Napoleon says to you though. Among the many difficult decisions, you have to make throughout the game comes one that will shape your entire empire, build tall or build wide. In other words, focus on a small number of cities that grow to be vast and highly productive, or expand rapidly and have a more considerable amount of cities which, while each part is less powerful and productive, all add up to powerful effect.

Ultimately, you can’t do both; you can’t build an empire of spanning a large number of cities and have each one be a complete powerhouse, giving you all the culture, science, production and economic benefits you could ever dream of. At some point, you have to make a decision based on what is right for you and what fits your situation best. The reason is simple, there just isn’t enough resource in the game to sustain an empire like that.

This dilemma is all about balance; it is about balancing the development of the cities you already have vs the growth and expansion of new cities. It’s a careful balancing act and maximising the potential of your empire through it takes practice.

As a digital marketing manager, I am no stranger to this kind of issue; it is something I face when considering my content strategy. Target too many topics and specialisms and my resources will be spread too thin trying to cover each one with sufficient depth and quality to produce results. Target too few and risk missing out on essential parts of the market. I can not target every relevant topic out there with a high level of depth and quality, all at the same time.

To stay on top of your empire and drive the optimal level of growth and expansion you need to carefully monitor all the data the game gives you about each city, what they are producing now and what they are capable of producing in the future. Keeping an eye on data like this is also crucial for any content strategy. Whatever tools you use from the vast range available it is essential to gather data and use it to make an informed decision on which topics people search for and engage in and which of those are likely to drive conversions.

You also need to know where it is best to target your attention because as discussed in my previous article time management, you can’t do everything. Just like you might not want the pesky English to claim those precious luxury resources before you, you don’t want to let your competition dominate relevant topics in search rankings ahead of you. You need to forget the pride though and consider if the keyword is worthwhile targeting anyway. If it is not going to drive traffic and conversions for you or if there are other areas with more potential, then move your focus elsewhere and let them be.

Basically, pick your battles, there is a reason why Civilization has multiple victory types, and a reason why I have never won a game through pure military conquest, you can’t always take on the whole world and have it all. Instead, you have to find what you are best at and what is going to deliver the best return and focus on that. Unless it’s Nepolean… he always deserves it.