Marketing For Indie Developers
Marketing Tools
Videos / Screenshots / Artwork
Media Outreach
Influencer Outreach
Storefront Experiences
Community Management
Partners + Platforms
Game Demos / Previews
Event Experiences
Advertising Campaigns
Social Media
Game Merch
Guerilla Marketing
Tips
All marketing elements work in coordination and support of one another. The success of one part is dependent upon the success of the other.
Direct and coordinate all the tools at your disposal at the right time. They should be put in place in a steady and increasing cadence to wow your audience.
Resources
Chris Zuzowski: howtomarketagame.com
Game Discovery Co.: Games marketing news, data, analysis newsletter.
Catapult.gg: Distribute your games to Influencers when you are on a budget.
Thomas Brush Youtube Channel: Advice for indie game developers
Marketing Strategies Part 1
Focus on Game Highlights
Communicate to your audience what makes your game special.
As a developer you know what makes your game special so identify those moments / memorable sequences and capture them in your marekting story.
You need to know which aspects of your game are worth emphasizing and which bits are not. For example: If you have a unique art style, don’t focus on your double jump mechanics.
Stay flexible and react quickly to what’s gaining traction or changing in the market.
Play Into the Game’s Theme
Example: Terra Nil
Game about a city builder that turns a polluted wasteland into a natural paradise.
Marketing strategy involved donating 8% of its profits to the Endangered Wildlife trust.
Partnered with 50 streamers to plant more than 50,000 trees on Earth Day.
Play Into the Game’s Aesthetic
Example: Cult of the Lamb
Distinct art style, adorable characters, and dark themes appealed to many types of gamers.
The unique feel and appearance made the branding easily identifiable.
Example: Cuphead
Unique hand drawn art with 1930’s classic style animation stood out from all other games
The game focused on the boss fights with personality for every boss.
“Dark souls levels of difficulty”
Offer Players the Product and Merchandise
Example: Strangely Fun
Merchandising of T shirts with game logo and smoking themed products helped to increase game’s visibility.
Difficult game to demo at in person events, so developer offered a simple demo for Steam Next Fest to give players room to explore with no time restrictions.
Tell A Story
If you are a likable human being with a story to tell, people will want to support you, even if your product isn’t something they would usually buy.
People buy people first and their products second.
Forging human connections will curate an audience that is invested in your success.
Potentially play into the indie developer journey:
Maybe you struggled to break into the gaming industry and decided to go it alone.
Maybe you are making a spiritual successor to a game you loved as a child that other developers have neglected for years.
Prepare a Press Kit
Reviewers and Influencers can get your game in front of as many people as possible. This is important as you near your release date.
Before you reach out have a press kit prepared. This includes:
Description of your game and its story
Release details
Screenshots and key art for use in articles, thumbnails, etc.
Clear outline of information you don’t want the reviewer to share with the audience.
Contact details for follow up interviews or support.
Journalists and streamers are busy so do as much of the heavy lifting for them as possible.
Market Research
In AAA studios, you would need to understand who your audience is, where they are, and how to reach them. But, as an indie developer, you don’t really need to know that many details.
Study not your AAA games but your fellow indie developers.
For example: How indie developers interact with others on social media can help you understand what works and what elements you should include in your own marketing campaigns.
Building a Community
Establish Trust
Goal:
Show players you will take the game to completion. This is especially important for launching a kickstarter campaign or going early access.
Methods:
Create an attractive website (good websites cost $$$ however).
Maintain a social feed or discord server
Stay active and provide frequent updates. If you go silent people may start to drop off. Regular updates + a weekly blog post goes a long way to sustain long term interest and build a dedicated community.
Remain Visible
Post about your game from concept to completion.
Post at a steady cadence: updates, GIFs, events you attend
Create video content in regular intervals. Videos get big boost in visibility on Twitter.
Reply to everything on twitter. Get involved in conversations and add value to them. The Twitter algorithm pushes replies to the timeline more which gets more eyes on you.
Provide Additional Content
Updates, Patches, and DLC can put the spotlight back onto your game post launch.
Patches demonstrate a willingness to maintain your game post release and fosters trust amongst your players.
New content can be shared like videos, gifs, screenshots.
New information can circulate on blogs, steam news, etc.
Attract new players with discounts.
When communicating with news outlets, give them a game code ahead of time.
Marketing Strategies Part 2
Tips from Thomas Brush: 5 Indie Game Marketing Hacks With NO MONEY
Don’t rely on the idea that a good game will sell itself.
Put Together A Press List
A press list consists of 200-300 personal email addresses.
Each email consists of a persons name and company
These addresses belong to freelance writers, game reviewers, and other individuals that can potentially write articles about your game.
You can find press lists online but these addresses are saturated with requests so you should look elsewhere.
You should try to find game journalists that will potentially like your work or play games in similar generes to yours.
Metacritic is a great place to find game reviewers.
Additionally, gather a press list of about 200 youtubers. Target youtubers with 20k+ subscribers.
Send out a press release to these addresses asking them to review your game. This message should include a press kit link. It should be immediately visible in your email and you want it to have everything this individual needs to write an article about your game. (screenshots, description, bio, email, trailer, logo, everything) They shouldn’t have to email you back about extra information.
Post to Reddit
Post about your game on reddit
The title of your post should be personal:
Bad Example: “Here’s my game check it out its only 15 bucks”
Good Example: “For 10 years I have wanted to make games. Today i am launching my game and it is a dream come true”
Include a beautiful 5 second animated gif
Get YouTubers Involved In Your Game
Important
DON’T ASK YOUTUBERS TO PLAY YOUR GAME! (Not immediately anyway)
Get youtubers involved by
Asking them if they want to be a voice actor in your game.
Asking them if they want to be a character in your game.
Ask them if they would like to critique your game.
Ask them for their opinion about your game.
If You Are On Kickstarter, Work With Other KickStarter Campaigns
Find other kickstarter campaigns that were successful and ask them to assist
For example, if you post my campaign to your campaign followers and let them know they can get their hands on a free soundtrack, game, etc.
Use this to get more people to pre order your game.
What Not To Do
Dont spend too much effort targeting a single famous people to tweet about your game.
If you can get hundreds of retweets or a very famous video game streamer to tweet about your game then go for it. Unfortunately accounts with even 100k followers might not have that great engagement with their audiences.
Don’t pay youtubers to play your games especially if they have less than 5k subscribers.
For larger youtubers the price you would have to pay may be more than the sales you make from that engagement. It could be worth it if you manage to get a discounted rate.
Don’t pour too much effort into your website. Focus more on your presskit page.
Social Media Tips
Twitter
Video posts get huge boosts.
Replies are pushed to the timeline more than retweets.
Links to other websites are penalized so never include them in your original post. If you need to include a link, replay to your original post with the link because by having it in the replies it doesn’t impact your reach too much.
Steam
Use Steam Broadcasts to maximize views on your page.
See what steam demo events your are eligible to submit for and what makes sense for your game. This combined with steam broadcasting can generate 500-4000 wishlists per digital events. Get into 3-4 events a year if possible.
Youtube Shorts
Note
Tips from Meet the YouTuber Who Solved Shorts (Jenny Hoyos Interview)
Virality = Story + Twist.
To make a story that people care about, make it personal. For example I cooked for strangers to make money. But people were invested because the premise was my kitchen stove is broken and my goal is to make enough money to buy a new stove. I cook using a community kitchen.
Properties of a good short:
Strong Hook:
A title or thumbnail for a regular youtube video should be the hook in a short.
Hooks should be understood without audio.
So simple a 1st - 5th grader could understand. (Use a readability checker https://readabilityformulas.com/)
Have a consistent first frame for your shorts. Make that style yours so people can identify that it is your content when watching your shorts. For example: shorts that always start with a photo of the front of a fast food chain with a food item held in the center of the frame and text over the food item.
Powerful Retention Mechanism (something that encourages the audience to watch till the end):
Set viewer expectations (but add a twist): people should expect what they will see and what will be at the end (with room for a twist).
Have a WHY == why should people care about what you do, and EXPECTATION == what will you will do to follow through. TWIST == something unexpected occurs around the end.
For example: WHY = My mom has never had a mothers day gift, EXPECTATION == I will buy her the best present with $5. TWIST == mom drops and breaks the present but still loves it anyways.
On example is Mr. Best the red circle. Last person in the circle wins $500k. The retention mechanism was that the circle constantly gets smaller. Would be less exciting if the circle stayed the same size.
Expressing WHY and EXPECTATIONS should be done at the start of the video
But therefore storytelling (make the story compelling using conflict rising action):
Lots of change in the story. I went for a walk, BUT it started raining, THEREFORE i started running back home, BUT i had an umbrella, THEREFORE i got home without getting too wet.
Video length is longer than 30 seconds but not much longer than that.
Longer shorts require less retention to go viral.
Shorts that are less than 30 seconds need close to 100% retention or it will not be picked up by the algorithm.
Audiences have short retention spans so shorts that are too long may cause retention to fall off at the end.
Paced so viewers have time to breathe.
A short opens with a hook that contains tons of information so follow it up with a transition sentence.
Transition sentences should not completely break the pace, they should still continue the action. For example: instead of “lets get started” say “So i cooked illegally”
Everyone has a different audience so cater to yours. To do so:
Release as many shorts as possible.
Look at your retention graph in youtube analytics
Identify huge dips in retention. If they are at the end of the video trim them off, otherwise determine sources for dips and remove them in following shorts.
Maximize your scroll through rate (Percentage of people who viewed the entre short vs swiped away).
Note
retention can be higher than scroll through rate because of people watching the short over and over again.
Example process for creating a short:
Get a pool of ideas
Choose 1 idea
Write a hook
Write last line
Write expectation (foreshadowing)
Make a rough script
Film
Revisit script, revise, finalize, then edit.
TikTok
Compared to Viral YouTube shorts with 30+ seconds with more story and slower pace, Viral TikTok videos are 10-20 seconds and dense with information.
Instagram Reels
Have a mute feature so many videos are very visual with subtitles and very sharable since instagram focuses more on users sharing content with each other.