How can you avoid game marketing mistakes?
Making a game is a monumental task on its own!
Making people aware of your game?
This is arguably even tougher!
We’ve all seen that stats, but just for fun, let’s look at the number of Steam games
released each year for the past few years: 2015: 2724
2016: 4663 2017: 6839
and 2018: 9011!
In 2019, not only will there be even more games released on Steam, there will also be
even more titles to compete with via exclusives on other platforms like Discord and Epic Games
Store ! If you want your indie game to stand out in
2019, you’ll need to utilize all of the tips & tricks available, and of course avoid
any marketing missteps or pitfalls!
We are Ask Gamedev and these are the 7 biggest indie game marketing mistakes to avoid when
starting out!
Welcome back!
We make videos on how to elevate your games and inspire others.
If you want to continue the game development conversation after this video, check the video
description for a link to our Discord server.
This is the first of a 3 part series where we’ll be tackling marketing mistakes that
happen throughout the stages of a sales funnel.
So before we begin, Let’s look at a sales funnel.
People come in at the top, and they come out as customers at the bottom.
Now there are a lot of sales funnel variations that differ between industries, but for us,
let’s look at the most basic type.
There are three stages in this funnel: Awareness.
This group contains anyone who has heard about your game.
Maybe they read about your game on game site, saw you at convention, watched your trailer,
or saw your game on something like Steam’s discovery queue.
The next stage of the funnel is Consideration.
A portion of the people aware of your game will move onto this stage of the funnel.
These are the people who are interested in your game.
Maybe they sign up to your mailing list, follow you on social, set up a Google alert for news
on your game, or simply bookmark your dev blog.
And finally, the third stage of the funnel is Conversion.
A portion of the people from the consideration stage will buy your game!
As you can see, you lose a lot of people along the way.
It’s important to reach as many people as possible at the top, AND to nurture them through
to the bottom.
Now most games will fail right here at the start.
They simply don’t build enough awareness, or they do build awareness, but simply can’t
convert people to the next stage.
In this video we are addressing both of these scenarios.
The following are marketing mistakes that can affect your ability to build awareness
in the first place, and/or hinder your ability to convert potential customers from the awareness
stage to the consideration stage.
Let’s get into it: 1.
Not collecting any information Your first goal is to get people to the top
of the funnel, but once there, you have to keep people.
How do you do that?
One way is to collect their information!
If they’re interested, you need to keep your audience informed of future developments,
and of course, your game’s launch!
On your website, make sure you add a mailing signup.
Don’t just have it hiding somewhere near the bottom.
Have it stand out and make sure to direct people to it.
You also might remember from our game convention setup video, that we stressed collecting information
anywhere you show your game!
You can do this with a tablet, collecting business cards, or good old fashioned pen
& paper.
2.
Not maximizing the opportunities available with your platforms.
Every platform has their own marketing programs and opportunities for building awareness.
Don’t just upload your build and publish your store page - that’s only the beginning.
Read each platform’s documentation and look for opportunities that other devs may just
gloss over.
Some opportunities may be as easy as opting in, or using a readily available feature,
like Steam’s visibility rounds.
Some may require you to reach out to your platform partners and ask - it never hurts
to ask.
For more tips on maximizing your marketing opportunities on Steam, check out this video.
3.
Not using indexing systems strategically This next one is related to tip #2, but it’s
so important that we gave it its own section!
Whether it be tags on platforms like Itch.io and Steam, or the App Store’s keywords,
never forget to utilize indexing systems!
Tags and Keywords tell the platform what your game is about, and more importantly, can potentially
push your game to audiences of similar titles.
On Steam, strategically written tags can help Steam determine if your game should be on
another game’s “More Like This” page - a crucial place for building awareness from
an audience that already likes your title’s genre and/or theme!
That in turn can also help you get more impressions on Steam’s Discovery Queue.
Make sure you tag your game appropriately and follow best practices!
There is a big difference between tagging your game as “Indie” and “platformer”,
vs tagging your game with “Indie”, “platformer”, “2D”, “female protagonist”, “beautiful”,
and “hand-drawn”.
Reddit user Boarium wrote a great Reddit post on building a kick-ass Steam page where they
said: “My biggest mistake for a long time: only
using 3 or 4 of the 15 possible.
I was an idiot; you don’t have to be.”
4.
Having a Bad name Having a bad name or a forgettable name can
greatly hinder your game’s ability to build awareness.
We understand this one’s a bit subjective, but here are a few tips for avoiding a bad
game title.
Avoid using a title that’s not ownable.
Ideally you’d be able to own the title’s .com domain, twitter handle, handles on other
social networks, and most importantly, search engine results.
Avoid a name that’s tough to spell or pronounce.
If you want people to remember it, journalists to write about it, and streamers to say it,
choose a name that rolls off the tongue.
Avoid a name that’s in infringement territory.
If you don’t have the time and money to fight a cease and desist order, stay clear
of names that may infringe on registered trademarks.
For more tips on naming your game, check out this recent video we did on How to Name your
Indie game 5.
Partnering with a bad publisher or PR company/Marketing firm to announce and launch your game.
In any industry where there is money, there will be sharks, and the indie games industry
is no exception.
During the course of your development you may be approached by a number of publishers
or agencies that offer marketing and PR services.
Some will ask for a fee; some will ask for a royalty; and some for both.
But whether they find you, or you find them, our advice is to err on the side of caution
and do your due diligence.
We’re not going to name any names, but there are enough public examples of indie devs claiming
that they’ve fallen victim to companies with predatory practices.
Here are a few tips for doing your due diligence.
If it’s an agency, ask these questions: Ask for case studies.
A great agency should have case studies of their past successes.
A good case study will outline the problem they were trying to solve, their approach
to solving it, what they learned, and the outcome for their client.
Sometimes these can be filled with puffery - try to get real numbers (how much did it
cost the client?
what was their return on investment?).
Ask how many people and hours they’ll dedicate to your campaign.
This will set expectations as well as give you an idea of the true cost of what you’re
paying for.
Ask who their recent clients are, and see how those games performed.
Some agencies only will only showcase their success stories, but it’s important to see
their misses along with their hits.
Take a look at their recent clients and see how they’re faring.
Did those titles sell well?
Did they receive notable coverage from press or streamers?
How many views, likes, and comments did their trailer earn on YouTube.
If there isn’t notable coverage of any of their recent titles, this could indicate a
few things: They are living off the reputation of one
hit, but are unable to replicate the success.
Or they sign too many clients, and instead of doing dedicated work, they justspam their
media list and hope for the best.
If it’s a publisher you’re considering, here are some things to look at when evaluating:
Take a look at their track record.
Look at their games, and find out each title’s estimated sales.
You can use Steamspy for that.
If the numbers are low, that’s a red flag.
If the numbers are high, take a step further and try to see if their numbers are inflated
due to sales and giveaways.
Using isthereanydeal.com you can see what stores the game sold on, how heavily they’ve
been discounted in the past, and if the game has appeared in any bundles.
Take a look at their reach.
See how many followers they have, and more importantly, see how much engagement they
get from their followers.
If they have 100k followers, and only 2 people like their latest tweet, it’s likely they’ve
used services to artificially inflate their numbers.
Take a look at the contract!
Understand all the terms.
Are they asking for the rights to your IP?
Are they asking for the right of first refusal on sequels?
Are they making you commit to dates?
Are they making you commit to a certain console or platform?
Are they making you commit to giving away keys?
Are they providing you with an advance?
How does recoupment of costs work?
What’s their royalty percentage?
Is that forever?
On all platforms?
Go through everything AND don’t be afraid to negotiate.
6.
Releasing a bad announcement trailer The announcement trailer is arguably the most
important asset in your awareness stage.
In fact, don’t launch your Steam page without one.
If you’re an unknown dev, your trailer is your shot at getting the attention of journalists
and gamers.
It doesn’t matter if it’s your first game, or if no one knows you are, an amazing trailer
will cut through the noise, and is your ticket to getting featured on websites, upvotes on
r/games and shares on social.
Conversely if you put out a bad, or even a mediocre trailer, you are doing your game
and your studio a huge disservice, and it’ll be an uphill battle from there.
Now how do you make a great trailer?
Well there are enough resources out there, so we won’t get too much into it.
Some of the best indie game trailer creators in the scene today, including Kert Gartner
and Derek Lieu, have created tutorials that explain their process.
In addition, Mark Brown of Gamemaker’s Toolkit has also recently put together a great video
on this very topic.
We’ll have link to his video in the description.
There’s a lot to cover , but these are our three biggest points:
Have great game capture: Don’t rush the game capture.
Play and play, until you get a take that shines.
Remove any clutter.
If there’s a HUD or any onscreen elements that don’t really add to what you’re trying
to convey, disable them when capturing.
And capture it correctly.
From a technical side, we use OBS, and capture RAW at 60 frames per second.
You can also use an external capture card.
For converting capture, we use handbrake.
At the end of the trailer, have only one clear call to action.
A good one would be to Wishlist your game on Steam.
And finally,
Make the first five seconds impactful and interesting.
If you ever plan on running your trailer as an ad, this even more important!
You have five seconds to impress someone and hook them in.
Before the last tip, let’s talk about the Ask Gamedev Community Member Game of the Week.
This week we have The Blobs Fight by SkyPyre studios, a studio based in Ottawa, Canada.
The Blobs Fight is a local multiplayer party arena game where blobs battle it out, knocking
pieces off of one another, in order to consume said pieces to grow and dominate.
Development time for the title took 9 months, and it was released on Steam in June 2018.
7.
Starting without knowing what your hook is.
If you want people to talk about your game, you need a hook!
In fact, in today’s market the more hooks the better.
A hook is something unique or interesting about your game that someone can build a story
around, or something that sticks in someones head when they first hear about your game.
Without a hook, a journalist may not be compelled to write about your game, and even if they
are, they may struggle to come up with something interesting to say in your article.
Some examples of hooks could be: Accolades and Awards won (either by your studio,
or your team members on their past projects) An innovative mechanic that puts a twist on
a genre, or maybe even mashes up multiple genres
An interesting name.
Totally subjective - but if you nail the naming, people will remember it.
Ryan Clark did a great talk at Full Indie Summit 2016 where he breaks down all of the
hooks from his game, Crypt of the Necrodancer.
We’ll leave a link to the full talk in the description.
In addition to watching that video, we recommend reading the book Made to Stick by Chip and
Dan Heath.
The book does an excellent job of deconstructing what makes certain stories and ideas memorable.
Alright, so these were 7 tips to help you in the Awareness stage of the funnel, the
next phase would be to nurture your potential customers in the Consideration stage - we’ll
cover that in a future video.
For more Ask Gamedev check out this video on marketing a game with a $0 budget, or this
video on the different platforms to sell your game.