Across entertainment, music, sports, fashion, retail and other industries, companies are realizing that Roblox might be a great platform to reach a scaled audience and potentially explore monetization.
But if your company is new to the space, Roblox can be very confusing. And it’s not super easy to figure out if Roblox is a good fit for your brand / IP or not.
So we wanted to share our process for how we evaluate brands and determine whether or not Roblox is a good fit for them.
1. SEARCH YOUR BRAND IN ROBLOX EXPERIENCES
If there’s only one move you make in assessing Roblox for your brand, this should be it.
What To Do
Go to Roblox. You need to create an account and be logged in.
In the search bar, type in your brand / IP name.
In the drop down menu, select "in Experiences"
Count how many experiences that use your brand / IP.
Count how many players are currently playing experiences that use your brand / IP.
If you want to go much deeper, click on individual experiences to see how many lifetime visits they have.
Here is an example, searching for Transformers...
The search box is at the top, and below are the search results.
The top 4 Transformers games had over 1400 concurrent users when this screenshot was taken. As a frame of reference, Sonic Speed Simulator has 4K concurrents, My Hello Kitty Cafe has 5.8K concurrents, and Nikeland has 125 concurrents at this same time.
And combined those 4 unofficial UGC Transformers games also have 168M+ lifetime visits. That total number of lifetime visits would come in 6th place all time when compared to all other official brand experiences on Roblox.
Clearly, there's strong interest and proven success for the Transformers IP on Roblox.
2. SEARCH YOUR BRAND IN THE ROBLOX AVATAR SHOP
Next search again, but this time in the Roblox Avatar Shop.
What To Do
In the search bar, type in your brand / IP name.
In the drop down menu, select "in Avatar Shop"
Count how many UGC items that use your brand / IP.
If you want to go much deeper, click on items to see how many favorites they have.
If there are just a handful of instances of UGC items coming up, then that’s a sign the Roblox community doesn’t already care much about your brand / IP.
If there are tens or hundreds of results popping up, that’s a good sign. That shows you that you have fans of your brand / IP that are on the platform, using their creativity to bring your brand to life.
Here's a look at what Transformers results look like in the Roblox Avatar Shop...
3. KEY QUESTIONS TO ASK TO DETERMINE FIT
Separate from searching within the Roblox platform, you can ask yourself several key questions to evaluate whether Roblox is a good fit or not.
How Strong is Your Brand?
Having a strong brand that customers love can be a good indicator of future success on Roblox. Do customers wear your brand on t-shirts because they love it so much? If so, that's a good sign. If not, Roblox might not be a good fit.
Does Your Brand / IP Have a Global Reach?
Roblox is a global platform with lots of users around the world. If you’re only trying to hit one part of the world, then the platform won’t be super effective for you because you’ll be getting impressions from all over.
Are You Trying to Reach Young People?
While Roblox likes to boast that over 50% of its audience is 13 and over, there’s still lots of kids there. If your target audience is kids, then Roblox is likely a must have instead of a nice to have. But if you're trying to reach primarily people over 25 years old, then you should look at platforms other than Roblox.
What are your business objectives? Marketing or Monetization?
Are you trying to raise awareness and are interested in marketing KPIs? Or are you more interested in monetization? Roblox is a great platform for reaching audience and building brand awareness. There were over 65 million daily active users in January 2023, so the scale is there. But if you're more interested in monetization, Roblox might not be the best fit, since that's extremely difficult on the platform, especially for brands just testing out the space for the first time.
Do you have Roblox expertise in house?
Roblox is it’s own beast. And for even the most innovative social media savvy teams, Roblox is just different. You need people who can understand the space and help you navigate everything from UGC items, designers, comments, Robux (the platform's currency), influencers, and more.
Thinking about bringing your brand / IP to Roblox, but you aren’t sure whether it’s a good fit or just need help, we can help. Please drop me an email at steve@metaversemarcom.io.
Stephen Dypiangco is the CEO of Metaverse Marcom, a strategy and consulting firm helping entertainment and sports brands enter the metaverse.