Overview
So you just finished your new game and you want to market it, get it out to the world for everyone to enjoy as much as you do! But how do you go about it? Luckily for me I'm doing a degree and I have a teacher who taught me this but for any indie developers out there without a degree the prospect of having to market your game on your own can be quite daunting. The first and probably the important part of marketing is to have a plan.
Concept marketing poster
Step 1: The Plan
When it came to my game, the idea before I had a plan was simply to post the game out to as many people as I possibly could. Which on its own might sound like a good plan but I can assure you much more than that is needed. Thankfully my teacher made us come up with an actual plan, this had to include what pieces of marketing we would be doing, when we would be doing it, our vehicle of delivery for each piece of marketing and a rough success metric (clicks, views, etc.) that we have to keep track of.
My plan consisted like dev blogs (This), giving my game to games reviewers, asking radio presenters for time on air to talk about the game, game play videos, beta announcements, guerrilla marketing techniques and of course posting the game as many places as I could. This made me confident having this plan as it showed me the avenue for success (which is the overall goal of this project). However how do you the reader make a plan for your own game?
Example marketing schedule
Step 2: How to make the plan?
For starters it should be stated that there is no 1 size fits all when it comes to marketing, this is due to the fact that you must have a target audience and the avenue for reaching one target market may be completely different to another! For example the target audience for my game is commuters between the ages of 35-55 who use games as a way of burning time on their way to work. So my first piece of advice is to know your target audience as best you can! Create personas of them and hang them on your wall, talk to people you think meet your target criteria and ask them "Where do you find your news about games", "what do you like in your games", "where do you play your games" as well as a hundred other questions. Because the more you know about your target audience the better off you are when it comes time to developing your market plan to reach that target audience. Take my target market for example, how does one get commuters to play their video game whilst on the bus or train, well you put it on the bus or train. Hence why we are undertaking a guerrilla marketing campaign to put our game posters where our audience is!(concept poster) And lastly if you are still having trouble with your marketing plan then look at what other people are doing, not saying you should directly copy them but why reinvent the wheel when someone else has already made it perfect! After establishing your plan, there's only one thing left to do.
Step 3: Do the plan!
The most important part about making the plan is actually making sure you follow through and do all of the things that you planned to do. Gauge their success in a way that you can measure (bit.ly links are perfect for this) and overall just do the best you can.
With all that being said like my games Facebook page and follow on twitter.
Thanks for reading,
Joel.
