Why?

Too many teams still treat marketing as promotion, trailers, posts, and ads at the end of production.

Marketing isn’t a finishing touch. It’s part of how a game is shaped, tested, and understood from the start.

That belief led to the creation of The Game Marketing Loop™ by F*MAD, a framework that makes marketing a continuous, adaptive system instead of a last-minute push.

The Shift: From Funnels to Loops

Traditional models like AIDA and AAARRR were designed for e-commerce, not games. They assume a straight path from awareness to conversion.

But players don’t move in straight lines. They discover, decide, play, refund, and share, sometimes all in a single weekend.

The Game Marketing Loop reflects how games actually grow today:

• Awareness drives sales.

• Onboarding drives retention.

• Retention drives referral.

• Referral reignites awareness.

It’s not a funnel. It’s a living loop.

The Core Systems

The Game Marketing Loop™ by F*MAD is built on two interconnected systems, and a new way of measuring progress:

The Loop itself:
A cyclical model built on learning, testing, and iteration instead of one-way funnels.

The 5Ps for Games:
Classic marketing principles, reimagined for modern players and platforms:

• Product = Need + Distinction + Presentation

• Price = Expectation + Value + Self-awareness

• Place = Culture + Context + Focus

• Promotion = Clarity + Precision + Timing

• People = Empathy + Alignment + Trust

From KPI to KBI:
Most studios still measure marketing in Key Performance Indicators, impressions, clicks, conversions, numbers that reflect activity, not impact. In The Game Marketing Loop™, we replace KPIs with Key Behavior Indicators: signals that measure player value through behaviour, not just performance.

KBIs reveal what actually drives growth:

• How players discover, decide, and return.

• How communities share and advocate.

• How player actions create real marketing momentum.

It’s not about chasing metrics, it’s about understanding what behaviours mean and how to amplify them.

How It’s Used

Studios, educators, and marketing teams use the Game Marketing Loop to focus on what truly drives results, not vanity metrics, but clarity, focus, and momentum.

It’s designed to evolve: every campaign becomes data for the next, every experiment feeds learning, every launch sharpens the loop.