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Viral Game Company (designed for business websites to leverage Facebook fbml)
Posted by: Spencer Fraise on 8/6/2010 1:09:35 PM
Funding Needed:
Under $100k 		Category:
Marketing / Advertising 		Website :
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Location :
Fort Madison, Iowa, USA 		Viewed : 377 times
Favorited : 2 times 		Share
Description:
I'm looking to start a small company that focuses on creating simple custom flash based games to be placed on business websites designed to leverage the power of Facebook as a viral marketing tool.

The concept is simple, we will put together several simple "template" games in which we can quickly and easily customize with custom sprites (graphics) for the customer. The game will then be placed on the customer's website and integrated with Facebook's FBML to leverage Facebook's viral marketing potential. When a visitor plays the game they will be urged to post their score to their Facebook page and issue a challenge to their friends to see if they can beat it.

As an example, say a car dealership purchases a game to be placed on their company website. They select a car game in which the player must test drive a car and avoid pedestrians, but get points for each salesman they run over. We take head shots of each salesman and drop them on the salesman sprites in the game. This creates a fun and interactive addition to the company's website which in of it's self could help drive repeat visits, as well as personalizes the sales team before the potential customer ever hits the lot. But the true potential is reached once the player finishes the game and is then prompted with a message like "Congratulations! You score is (whatever), brag about your score on your Facebook page and challenge you friends to try and beat you". If the game is comical and fun the majority of people that play it that are on Facebook will post it. The post on the player's Facebook page would then look something like "(name) just got (score) on (dealership's name)'s run over the salesmen game and wants to see if YOU have what it takes to beat their score!".

As businesses like the dealership in this example are limited to their small local area it's difficult to really leverage the internet effectively as a marketing and advertising tool. However Facebook offers a unique way to focus on a local niche in a viral way. Once the post is made to a player's FB page the businesses name is seen by all of that person's FB friends which most likely are mostly within the same local area, therefore increasing name recognition in the businesses local area. It then compels those people to themselves visit the businesses website bringing in new targeted traffic. In turn, those people themselves post their score to their FB page, and it goes on in a true viral method.

Overhead for this business is low, the potential market is huge (basically any business with a website), and to my knowledge nobody is actively marketing anything like this. I believe this would be a pretty easy sell as this would most likely be some of the most effective marketing dollars these small local businesses could spend when compared to other types of media such as print and radio.

I intend to market this to businesses directly, however I also intend to leverage individual webmasters and small local computer companies that often times build websites for local businesses in their area to cross sell to their existing clients. It would be a great way for these small companies to quickly and easily add a new revenue stream from their existing customer base while giving us an instant sales force across the country.

Our starting model simply includes myself and one other developer, I would do most of the marketing, sales, and business work, while he would do the majority of the actual development work. We can produce the product almost for free if not counting time and work, within a matter of weeks. What we need is just a little bit of seed capital ($50,000 to $100,000) to keep the bills paid until revenue begins flowing, and to aggressively market the service and get our network of affiliate webmasters established in order to get a sustainable revenue stream rolling in quickly. I project that within 3 to 6 months of launching the company we will be in a position where we will need to consider hiring additional developers and in house sales associates.

Please contact me for more details on this project.
P.S. Please don't contact me with opportunities involving the need for upfront fees in an attempt to secure capital.

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