Power of Intrinsic Motivations in Product Marketing

In the ever-evolving landscape of mobile gaming, the pressure to drive immediate results has often led marketers to lean heavily on extrinsic motivations. Strategies rooted in FOMO, exaggerated claims, or outright misleading tactics have proven their effectiveness in short-term gains.

However, what if the key to long-term success lies in something more profound?

By focusing on audience profiling, unique selling points (USPs), and value propositions (value props) from the perspective of intrinsic motivations, marketers would be able to craft ads and creatives that truly resonates with their audiences — building deeper connections and sustainable engagement.

This is where we’ll be focusing on this article, incl. giving an example of a simple tool around these means.

The Role of Audience Profiling in Meaningful Marketing

Audience profiling is the foundation of effective marketing. It allows you to understand the needs, desires, and motivations of your target users on top of demographics and playing habits.

However, the difference between surface-level profiling and a deep, intrinsic understanding of your audience is monumental.

Traditional profiling often emphasizes demographics and behaviors. While useful, this approach can miss the underlying intrinsic motivations that truly drive engagement — such as the need for mastery / competencies, connection / relatedness, and/or autonomy. For example, a gamer might download a game not because of flashy rewards or limited-time offers but because they seek a challenge that aligns with their sense of achievement or a social experience that brings them closer to friends.

By tapping into these core drivers, you’re not just selling a product; you’re addressing an unmet psychological need. This shift in perspective changes how you frame your USPs and value props, making them more authentic and relevant.

Side Note: Interested about use of Intrinsic Motivations in other areas as well as having social depth in your games? Check my articles below:

Rethinking USPs and Value Props

USPs and value props are often defined in terms of features, outcomes or differentiating factors of a game: e.g., better mechanic, better immersion and depth, and/or higher generosity. While these attributes are important, they should serve as vehicles for delivering deeper value. This deeper value is what truly differentiates your product in a crowded market.

For example, think about a game that promotes its challenging gameplay as a USP. Instead of merely highlighting the difficulty level, the marketing narrative could focus on the emotional satisfaction of overcoming those challenges, e.g., “Prove your skills in the most rewarding tactical experience”, which speaks more directly to intrinsic motivation than “The hardest game on the market.”

Similarly, value props should evolve from “what the product offers” to “why it matters” from the player’s perspective. This approach ensures that your messaging resonates with the “why” rather than just the “what.”

Side Note: Interested more about USPs and value props and how to find them more effectively? Read my article about you can find them ‘the right way’ here (https://gamesalchemy.substack.com/p/23-finding-your-unique-selling-points):

The Danger of Misleading Strategies

Misleading strategies often prioritize short-term wins over long-term brand trust. Ads that promise gameplay or rewards that don’t align with the actual experience might boost downloads but often lead to high churn rates and damaged reputation.

Intrinsic motivation-based marketing builds loyalty and trust, which are far more valuable in the long run. By aligning your USPs and value props with authentic audience needs, you create a foundation for sustainable growth.

There are of course several exceptions to the rule — where e.g., misleading, mini-game, etc. strategies are more authentically part of gaming experiences. On this side, some solutions are on the grey area, whilst some are actually on more healthy side. Interested to find more about these? I’d recommend reading more about these things from my following articles here:

Moving Beyond Commercial Sentiment

Mobile gaming’s current commercial sentiment often prioritizes ‘aggressive monetization’ over player satisfaction. While this approach has proven profitable, it can also led to player fatigue and skepticism.

Side Note: Maybe this has something to do in general about e.g., F2P purchase conversion ratios and why they are such low ones in general? On this side, I think there’s lots of depth still here to be opened if right strategies would be used from the ‘full funnel’ perspective with right means, e.g., intrinsic strategies.

To differentiate your product and marketing in the current commercial-oriented landscape, the focus should be on creating ads and creative content that reflect genuine value.

This shift requires rethinking how you approach marketing campaigns:

1. Understand Intrinsic Motivations: Use audience profiling to identify deeper needs like mastery / competencies, connection / relatedness, and/or autonomy.

2. Tie USPs to Emotional Outcomes: Highlight how your product fulfills these needs rather than just listing features.

3. Prioritize Authenticity: Ensure your messaging and creatives reflect the actual player experience.

4. Engage with Transparency: Build trust by delivering on your promises (and avoiding tactics that could erode player confidence, as/if this makes sense).

Extra Layer of Depth

Want to go even deeper from these layers?

There’s possibility for this nowadays given services such as GameRefinery and Solsten for mobile developers, which both have different audience profiling tools based on e.g., further motivations, archetypes, and psychological traits.

Combining things from those services with your USPs, value props, audience demographics as well as intrinsic drivers can be more helpful in driving a more deeper and targeted product marketing efforts.

Designing Tools for Ads and Creatives Creation with Deeper Layers Included

Whilst the contents of this article might sound complex, building good tooling helps always. Below you can see one example of how such a tool could look, which I’ve built as an example.

Example of Ad and Creatives planning tool with scoring features (the image should open to a full view mode when you click / tab it).

This tool basically is a scorecard for your Ads / Messages / Creatives and their types, which scores (suggestion is to add weighting for scores given what you prioritize) your messages / content for players based on different motivations, archetypes, USPs and value props your content correlates with; giving a priority order to follow for your Ads / Creatives and UA strategies.

Things doesn’t need to be complex, and even something simple like this opens a new layer for your marketing / product marketing strategies. Of course, basic understanding of what you’re using is required definitely.

Final Thoughts

Marketing strategies that prioritize intrinsic motivations over e.g., extrinsic hooks can lead to more meaningful and sustainable player relationships.

By leveraging e.g., audience profiling, USPs, and aligning value props with authentic needs, you’re not just selling a game — you’re creating an experience that resonates deeply with your audience. Results could be even better if you build your ‘whole funnel’ for your game this way, e.g., including engagement and monetization strategies on your game that are based on intrinsic and other strategies that drive longevity as the main thing — which, when done right, drives success for your game.

Why I think there could be better ways? Below image explains that for some genres ‘old ways’ might not be the best ones anymore — e.g., on core games’ side we’re seeing already decline happening, which I’m pretty sure is partially explainable by ‘wrong choices’ around extrinsic and intrinsic methods.

According to Deconstructor of Fun and Sensor Tower, core games have lost their momentum due to “high monetization”, which is aligned with my take on e.g., MMORPG genre, where P2W, Player vs. Victim, and pay to progress aren’t anymore the best choices for monetization. Intrinsic approach could definitely be a way how you can uplift not just your game but moreover a total market segment / genre — which is something I see starting from Marketing / UA / Marketability onward, where Intrinsic Strategies would have a major importance for building sustainable games. (Source: https://www.deconstructoroffun.com/blog/2025/1/7/2024-prediction-audit).

While use of intrinsic methods may not deliver the immediate results of misleading tactics, this approach can build the foundation for long-term success in a competitive industry — and most likely is where many future bets are going, given we’ve seen some segments churning with ‘old means’.

I’ve used similar methods previously and have seen great results, e.g., on a game / genre where we expected CPIs be up to $20 USD, we got < $1 USD starting point in US that hold pretty long — without compromising the audience and its quality. Of course, CPIs did went up over time step by step, but they were manageable better and easier than starting with anything around $20 USD. This starting point also helped in building engagement and monetization strategies that leaned also on intrinsic strategies. We did also see a great amount of social and community-driven phenomena, even we didn’t drive them as a goal, because we had depth in our social mechanics and messaging for the players that resonated well with players wanting social experiences.