Complete Marketing Strategy of PlayStation – With Company Overview

Updated on: Sep 19, 2022
Marketing Strategy Of Playstation - Featured Image

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My name is Aditya Shastri and I have written this case study with the help of my students from IIDE's online digital marketing courses in India.

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In the previous article, the SWOT analysis of Xbox. In this article, we will discuss the marketing strategy of one of the top video gaming consoles – Playstation by Sony.

This blog helps you understand the Marketing strategy of PlayStation. A brand that almost everyone from a 10-year-old to a 60-year-old uses and loves!

And obviously, Sony’s strategic marketing helped its product- Playstation reaches out to its target audience. As people around the world have migrated to the digital sphere, marketing has followed suit. If you too are interested in digital marketing then you should definitely check out IIDE’s Free MasterClass on Digital Marketing, by our CEO and Founder Karan Shah.

By the end of this blog, you will know the marketing strategy of Playstation completely. Before diving deep into it, let’s begin with the company’s story, target audience, and digital presence.

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About Playstation – Company Overview

Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE), a global leader in interactive and digital entertainment, is responsible for the PlayStation® brand and its family of products and services. Since the launch of the original PlayStation in Japan in 1994, PlayStation has been a leader in the industry.

PlayStation®5, PlayStation®4, PlayStation®VR, etc are all part of the PlayStation family of products and services.

SIE is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sony Group Corporation with global headquarters in San Mateo, California, and offices in London and Tokyo.

Quick Stats on Playstation
CEO Jim Ryan
CMO Eric Lempel
Area Served Worldwide
Industry Video Games
Market Share/ Revenue 64.5%
Vision To develop world-class games.
Tagline Live In Your World. Play In Ours.

 

Marketing Strategy Of Playstation

Sony spends a significant portion of its profits on marketing activities for its PlayStation brand. PlayStation is known for creating numerous campaigns that heavily promote its products among gamers. As part of its marketing strategy, Sony employs aggressive promotion. “Play has no limits” is the brand’s slogan, emphasising the brand’s position as a core gaming product. “eNoS Lives,” “The Ultimate Just Got Power,” “It Only Does Everything,” and “Move into the Action” are just a few of Sony’s well-known slogans. 

Many exhibitions around the world showcase PlayStation’s upcoming products and games. Every year, PlayStation products are showcased at the Electronic Entertainment Expo, the world’s largest gathering of gamers. Such events allow Sony to showcase and advertise its products to a larger audience while also focusing on potential buyers, such as gamers. PlayStation is also widely advertised on television. As a result, the PlayStation marketing mix is now complete.


Segmentation, Targeting, And Positioning

Gamers are a market segment for Sony PlayStation. Age, gender, and income are all taken into account when it comes to demographic segmentation. According to Sony, the North American market, the Japanese market, and the European market are the three main geographic segments of the PlayStation 4, which is the latest product in a long line of PlayStation products. Sony’s demographic segmentation divides the PS4 market into male and female, old and young players, and expands the company’s business into a broader entertainment mainstream. 

Most first-person shooter games, for example, are rated M, which means that you must be 17 or older to purchase the game in a store. Other games are labelled E for everyone, T for teenagers, and E+10 for those over the age of ten. When new apps are added to the console, gender plays a role as well

Sony Playstation is aimed at men aged 17 to 40 years old. They target men who have recently left the state of being a gatekeeper and now have more freedom than children and teenagers. The most popular PS3 games are rated M, which means you must be at least 17 years old to play.

Sony has positioned the PlayStation 5 (newly released console) as the hardcore gamer’s console of choice. It is the next-generation console with high-quality graphics and an immersive gaming experience.

Marketing Campaigns

Sony has transformed some of London’s most iconic Underground stops into PlayStation symbols as part of their PlayStation 5 marketing campaign. 

The PlayStation 5 has been a long time coming, and the build-up to its release has been thrilling.

Marketing Strategy Of Playstation - Campaign 1

This year, Sony has broadened its marketing efforts in an attempt to reach out to people from all walks of life. Their collaboration with Travis Scott on a new pair of Cactus Jack x PlayStation Nike Dunks wasn’t exactly what PlayStation fans expected from the new console’s ad campaign, but it certainly generated a lot of buzzes.

Marketing Strategy Of Playstation - Campaign 2


Social Media Marketing

PlayStation has a fan base of more than 35 million people. That’s right, 35 million. That kind of traction doesn’t come easily. PlayStation has built a fan base over the years, and in an age when communities exist on a variety of platforms, PlayStation has been able to fully capitalise on this. But how do they maintain engagement?

PlayStation, on the other hand, does not only post about its consoles; it also posts about games and special offers.  It helps that PlayStation has its own eCommerce platform, PlayStation Store, which allows the company to promote its own games and films instead of relying on third-party vendors. 

Furthermore, because PlayStation does not segment its customers by product, customers can see what’s going on across the PlayStation system family and are aware of promotions across the board, which is a great way to increase sales. PlayStation encourages fans to participate in polls and surveys that lead to promotions and offers.

Let’s dig into some numbers now and see how many followers they have on each platform.

Facebook: 38,492,599(38 million) 
Instagram: 28.9 million 
LinkedIn: 704,394
Twitter: 25.5 Million

As we can see, they are most followed on Facebook, as a lot of older fans prefer using Facebook.


SEO strategies

Marketing Strategy Of Playstation - SEO

Playstation has a bounteous 1.5 million keywords on their page!! No wonder they are where they are now!

Even so, their monthly traffic is off the charts! They average about 46.3 million organic visitors per month.

The SEO strategy of Playstation is foolproof and solid as we can see they have one of the highest domain authorities that we’ve ever seen! Sony has clearly put in a lot of hours into ranking its site and has tapped into the crawlers algorithm.


Influencer Marketing

Playstation, unlike the others, is able to get most of its influencer marketing done for free as there is a huge and dedicated community that talks about all the updates and the new products coming up. But they also do sign deals with very big content creators to further maximise their reach among their target market. 

For example, Felix Kjellberg, also known as PewDiePie on the internet, currently has the most subscribers on YouTube. Kjellberg’s YouTube channel, which has over 81 million subscribers, is primarily dedicated to video game reviews. PlayStation decided that his birthday would be an excellent opportunity to promote its brand. 

To celebrate, the company sent Felix a cake with a game controller hidden inside. As a result, PewDiePie made a video and tweeted about the cake’s contents. The video received 3.2 million views, and the Tweet received more than 30,000 likes. PlayStation received a great deal of press coverage for a small investment.


Ecommerce Strategies

As a Sony product, PlayStation is marketed internationally. The brick-and-mortar Sony stores, which also act as customer service and repair facilities, are the main locations where its products are sold. These shops also carry additional Sony goods under the PlayStation brand. PlayStation can also be bought through online e-commerce sites. PlayStation products are sold on sites like Amazon, eBay, Flipkart, and others thanks to partnerships with the best e-commerce platforms. 

However, there aren’t many differences between the discount selections offered by Sony stores and online retailers. As a result, customers typically prefer to buy PlayStations from Sony stores.  Sony products, especially PlayStations, are available in retail electronics stores as well. PlayStations are displayed on shelves in large retail chains like Reliance, Chroma, and Home Shop.


Mobile Apps

Sony created this subscription-based game streaming service so PS4 owners could play classic PS3 games without having to download them. Think of it as the Netflix of games. There are currently more than 450 games available on PlayStation Now, according to Sony.

Marketing Strategy Of Playstation - Mobile App

You will need to pay $19.99 per month, which is too expensive for many of us, in order to have access to all of them. There is only one simple way to do it, and that is through PlayStation Now. If you’re new to PlayStation and want to try out the blockbuster exclusive games that were offered on the previous console.

There is a 7-day free trial for PS Now that you can use wisely to help you decide whether it’s right for you. If you’re a die-hard gamer, this is the best PS4 app to invest your hard-earned cash in.


Content Marketing Strategies

Playstation is very active on social media platforms. Its posts are highly engaging and grab users’ attention with regular posts and relatable content. Apart from social media, Playstation also organises events at various game launches and holds contests to ensure that gamers are greatly involved. 

This ends with an elaborative marketing strategy of Playstation. Let us conclude our learning below from the marketing strategy of Playstation.

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Conclusion – What’s Unique In Playstation’s Marketing?

In the marketing strategy of Playstation, we saw that Playstation is the leading video gaming console. With the excellent marketing strategy of Playstation, it manages to come to the mind of a gamer when they think about video gaming. Playstation’s user-first approach has made it possible to bring in users’ convenience and enhance their gaming experience.

Having outstanding digital marketing skills can prove to be a boon for your company. With SEO-optimised strategies, you can easily target your audience and grab their attention towards your company. As we all know now when the digital revolution is taking place, it has become mandatory to have a digital presence! Having said that in order to grow your reach you will need at-par digital marketing skills.

Digital marketing is crucial since it links a company with its clients when they are online and is effective across all sectors. It links businesses with ideal consumers through SEO and PPC on Google, social media marketing, and email marketing. If you would like to learn more and develop skills, check out IIDE’s 4-Month Digital Marketing Course to learn more.

Alternatively, you can enrol in one of our free online masterclasses led by IIDE’s CEO, Karan Shah, to gain insight into the field of digital marketing. 

We hope this blog on the marketing strategy of Playstation has given you a good insight into the company’s marketing strategies.

If you like such in-depth analysis of companies just like the marketing strategy of Playstation check out our IIDE Knowledge portal for more fascinating case studies.

Thank you for taking the time to read the marketing strategy of Playstation, and do share your thoughts on this case study marketing strategy of Playstation in the comments section below.

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Aditya Shastri

Lead Trainer & Head of Learning & Development at IIDE

Leads the Learning & Development segment at IIDE. He is a Content Marketing Expert and has trained 6000+ students and working professionals on various topics of Digital Marketing. He has been a guest speaker at prominent colleges in India including IIMs......[Read full bio]

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