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Marketing & Community Basics

For Game Devs

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Table of Contents!

About Me

3. Community Basics

2. Marketing Basics

4. Wrap Up

Hello!

Content strategy, general advice

The 4Ps, Marketing Funnel, general advice

Q&A

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Introduction

UBC Bachelor of Commerce

35+ launched titles over 2 years at Evolve PR

Community and Marketing Lead at Clever Endeavour Games

Steph

she/her

maplethistles

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01

Marketing Basics

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The 4Ps of Marketing

Product

Price

Place

Promotion

What kind of game are you making?

How much is your game going to be?

What platforms is it going to be on?

Where and how are you going to show off your game?

Some of the fundamental decisions that will affect how you tackle marketing strategy will be formed long before your first social post. These 4Ps of marketing are things you should discuss and make key decisions on as early as possible. While these things can shift and change as you develop the game and work on partnerships, it’s good to have a general idea of what you’re aiming for. What things are on the table? Which ones aren’t?

Product: This one is pretty simple. What type of game are you making? Are you making an FPS? A visual novel? Is it aimed at kids? All ages? Adults? Hyper violent? Non-violent? More narrative-focused or more mechanics-focused? How you market a hard-core deck-building game will be extremely different from a dating visual novel.

Place: The platforms that you’re aiming for will also have very different strategies. Marketing mobile games is a totally different beast than PC games. If you want to aim for consoles, how many are you aiming for and which ones? Is there a platform partner that you think would be a good fit? It’s a good time to know now what type of games they’re looking at by looking at their top sellers and game showcases.

Price: While you won’t need to choose the exact dollar amount, it’s a good idea to know where you, and your competitors stand. Free to play is a very different beast than a $10 indie game, and so is an $80+ AAA title. Think about realistically what your studio is looking to pull off in terms of quality (art design, level design, polishing bugs, game features) and playtime, to not only help with budgeting but to make sure expectations are going to be right at launch.

Promotion: While I think many people will think of social media, promotion is so much more! Are you going to be doing in-person events? If so, how many? When are they? What kind of budget will you need for them? Are you going to do a demo for a Steam festival? Want to be in certain event showcases? Are there any partners you want to work with? Are you going to have a content creator program? Are you going to reach out to press? Don’t worry about the nitty-gritty details early on like the exact content creators you want to work with, but absolutely plan out the big picture timeline and get an idea of what things you need for each thing. Some showcases are free, some cost $80k or more. Booths at in-person events can be deceptively pricey too, but there can be grants or programs that help. It’s also important to keep an eye on these things just so you’re not trying to crunch a demo the week before an event.

When you’re sure you have a prototype that you want to get serious about, open up a document and write these down and revisit them throughout development.

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Marketing Funnel

Awareness: Storefront Optimization, Events, Showcases, TikTok, Content Creators�
Consideration: Twitter, Newsletters, Reviews, Demos�
Conversion: Storefront Optimization, Sales�
Loyalty: Discord, Support Tickets�
Advocacy: Twitter, Instagram

Source: Sprout Social

Also may see �TOFU, MOFU, BOFU funnels

While there are a bunch of different versions of this funnel, they all roughly talk about the same thing. Before people purchase any product or service, there are various stages that they go through.

Awareness: The first stage is being aware of your product. For folks just starting out, this is one of the hardest steps since the marketplace is so crowded. In my personal opinion, I think the best way to introduce your game to new people is to make sure you’re optimizing your store presence (if you’re going to be on Steam, check out https://howtomakeasteampage.com/). Other effective methods are taking part in events, both in-person and virtual. You may note that the only social channel I put here is TikTok, and that’s because I think its algorithm is one of the best for putting your content in front of new people as the whole platform is basically designed to put content of people you don’t follow on your for you page, compared to Twitter where people will mostly only see content from people they already follow. I’ve seen other platforms work, like Imgur or Reddit, but I would say it’s become more rare than in years previous. As for content creators, this is very likely to be a late-game strategy closer to launch, but can be a great way to get your game in front of new audiences.

Consideration: This stage is where people compare you to the other 10,000+ games that release each year. There are a lot of ways that you can stand out on your store page, trailers, Twitter, newsletters, and demos. It’s also important to note here that when I talk about reviews, I’m talking about everything from MetaCritic, to traditional games media to content creator reviews. Making sure you get your game in the right hands can be so important as various people still use these in their purchasing decisions.

Conversion: This is where people actually buy your game! Make sure that the path to buying your game is extremely easy and streamlined when it’s out. Have purchase links in your Twitter bio and pinned post, put purchase links on your website, newsletters and just about everywhere. Having small launch discounts or taking part in steeper discounts later in the game’s lifespan can also help convince people to buy.

Loyalty: Things don’t end after the purchase. You’ll want to build a positive experience with your players so they leave with positive associations with you, your game, and your studio. There’s no one way to do this, but make sure you’re assisting people with any technical issues and support tickets. Interact with people who are playing your game online. Loyalty can also be built by adding highly requested updates to the game.

Advocacy: If people like you and your game enough, they’ll talk about it! You can acknowledge and encourage people advocating your games by thanking people for playing your game and signal boosting any fan-created content onto your own channels. Twitter makes it easy to find mentions of your game in Tweetdeck and I also recommend setting up Google Alerts to find people talking about your game. While it might be considered a little old school on some platforms, giving people a hashtag to rally around can be a great way not only for you but also for fans to discover content on Twitter, Instagram and TikTok.

People will go through the funnel stages in very different ways, and many will bounce out before they get to the purchase stage. Two good rules of thumb using this principle is that the more people you get at the top of the funnel, the more purchases you get, but it’s also important to show your game to the right people to make sure that the highest percentage of people are making it to the purchase stage.

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Market Soon and Often

Source:�Steam Q&A

April 2021

(thanks to howtomarketagame.com)

Think of marketing like a train. The more stops you have along the way, the more people you can pick up on your journey.

Tom Ohle, Evolve PR

In a Q&A early this year they shared this graph which showed some correlation between how long a game was on the Steam store versus how many sales it made.

While I don’t think just throwing up a Steam store page and sitting back to do nothing for a year won’t bring you success, I do think people who are on the store for longer periods of time generally are participating in more marketing beats.

Something that my old boss, and the co-founder of Evolve PR, used to tell us was to think of marketing like a train. The more stops along the way, the more people you can pick up at each stop. And while yes, some people will get off, hopefully you’re gaining more people at each stop than you are losing. By starting early, you’ll simply have more chances to put your game in front of people.

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Keep an eye on what others are doing!

Another piece of general advice I have is to pay attention to others both inside and outside of the industry.

Watch showcases not only to see what type of games various platforms are partnering with, but also to see how their audiences are reacting to said games.

Look at trends in your game genre. Are more games being made? Less? What are they doing well? What aren’t they doing well? This is both for the game itself and how they’re marketing it.

Also look at what type of content they’re doing. What’s doing well? What isn’t?

Be inspired, but don’t just straight up copy! Marketing is hard, and approaches have to be unique based on the game you’re working on and your unique studio situation.

I’ll be making a blog post and spreadsheet template for marketing research at a later date. Keep an eye on my Twitter for it!

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02

Community & Social Media

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Post Types

twitter.com/BiancaCiotti/status/1237477853567913984?s=20

Informative�
Educational�
Delightful�
Transactional�
Reactive

Pick 1-2 per post!

When it comes to making posts for social media, it’s incredibly important to think about the purpose of each post. Bianca Ciotti broke this down beautifully in the Twitter thread listed above, but I’ll give you a summary of it here.

Informative posts are ones where you’re teaching them something about your game. This could be about events you’re participating in, telling about new features, announcing your launch date and so much more.

Educational posts are where you’re trying to teach the audience something. This could be how to do something better in the game, introducing them to your team, or even sharing game development tips.

Delightful posts are one’s that are fun and promote engagement. These can be memes, following trends, interacting with users, fan art, etc.

Transactional posts are where you ask the audience for something. This could be to join your Discord, wishlist, buy your game, leave a review, or fill out a survey.

Reactive posts are ones where you need to address a situation. These can be responding to angry customer reports, letting people know about server issues, public apologies and more.

To make a more impactful social media post, try to pick just one or two of these categories. When you try to do more than that, your message gets watered down and is hard to follow.

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80%

20%

The 80/20 “Rule”

Content

Transactional

Not a hard and fast rule, adjust based on your promotion timeline

While this rule isn’t written in stone, it is a good way to think about overall content.

The idea is that 80% of your posts should just be content. This can be informational, delightful or educational.

The other 20% are “selling” or transactional posts. In these posts you’re asking action from the post reader, such as joining your Discord, buying the game, joining your mailing list and more.

Think of this as a guiding principle for your overall strategy. Don’t be afraid to ask people to do things early in your marketing timeline, but if all you do is ask people to do things, they’re likely to get tired of it pretty quick.

If you go back to the Bianca post I mentioned before, she breaks down some more ratio examples based on the type of account you’re working on, but this 80/20 rule is an extremely basic thing to think about for the average studio or game account. Adjust these ratios around important marketing beats.

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Set the community tone and your boundaries early

When you’re building your community, I cannot state how important it is to model the type of behaviour that you want to see in the community early.

If you have a Discord, have clear rules at the forefront. And if there are any questions about them, revisit, clarify and add things as needed.

It is much harder to take back something after it’s been given. So don’t be afraid to put your foot down.

Everyone’s boundaries are going to be different both in how they want to be reached, when to be reached, and how much you’re going to share.

For example, my current community knows exactly what situations they should be pinging me, especially if it’s out of work hours. They also know and trust that I’ll share certain information when the time is right. They also know what type of behaviour is acceptable in our Discord and act accordingly.

When it comes to boundaries, there’s no one right answer here, but make sure that you’re comfortable and ready for the marathon, rather than a short sprint and burning out.

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Direct People

Make it obvious how and where you want things.

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Know your strengths and be authentic

Look, we all have our own interests and strengths. If marketing and community excite you, it will come across, especially if your company voice is similar to your personality.

For example, I know I’m never going to be cool to Gen Z, and I DEFINITELY lean into the whole “hey fellow kids” vibe while engaging with the community. I’ve never tried to be anything but that slightly goofy cool mom vibe, and the community knows exactly what to expect.

With that being said, you will always need to do some sort of filtering and self-censoring, but try to keep it within a similar vibe. Maybe just keep controversial tweets off your studio account.

If marketing or community management does not at all interest you and you have no passion to get better at it, the good news is there are tons of agencies, freelancers or potential employees who will happily work with you.

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Use the social media channels you plan to post on. Find out what content works, and what doesn’t.

Don’t be this!

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Quality > Quantity

Post when you have something to say or share. Just make sure to avoid silence.

When it comes to posts, don’t fall for the “social media guru” post 10 times a day on Twitter shtick. Very few people have the time and consistency to make that many posts.

If you’re clogging up people’s feeds just for the sake of posting, they’re going to mute you or unfollow. So make sure that each post has a purpose. That purpose doesn’t need to be deeply profound, it could just be “I want to share this cool art!” or “I want to share this funny joke I thought of”!

On the other side of that, also don’t spend 10 hours on a single post unless you can rehash parts of it for a lot of other posts. For some context, it has been said that content only “lives” on Twitter for 15 minutes. So be smart and prioritize!

It’s also important to note that going silent isn’t the answer either as you need to remind people that you exist. If you can’t think of things to post, here are a few places to start:

Look at old WIP art or development. Is there anything there you haven’t shown before that might be interesting? Or if it’s been a while since you shared it, could you share it for new followers?

Look at previous promo art and trailers. Can you screenshot them or GIF them and apply new text or perspective to it to change it up? Another idea is to look at things adjacent to your game and share that. For example, a bunch of Aggro Crab’s social content revolves around crabs and not just about their game, Going Under.

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Don’t put all your eggs in one basket

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Virality is a Gamble

Increase your odds by…�

Posting good quality content

Posting often�
Posting at the right time�
Growing your reach

My final piece of advice is to think of social media virality like a slot machine. There are tons of people trying to go viral, and a lot of it will come down to luck. But there are ways to increase your chances of getting a jackpot.

Post good quality content. “Good content” is completely objective and is extremely different not just based on the platforms you're posting on, but also in the micro-communities in those platforms.
Post more often. If you roll one D20, the chances of getting a 20 are pretty low. But if you roll a D20 100 times, you’re much more likely to have a 20 somewhere in there. Even the most seasoned social media manager will have an inkling as to what will perform well, only to have their expectations subverted.
The time that you post is also super important! If you’re not in a Nintendo Direct, it’s probably not a good idea to post in the hour that it’s airing as it’ll get drowned out. If your main audience is in North America, if you post at 4am, very few people will see it. Play around with different posting times and find out what works best!
Another way to increase virality chances is to increase your reach. One account with 16 million followers retweeting your post will often have more of an impact than 10 people with 2 followers retweeting it. That’s not to say you shouldn’t be thankful for smaller accounts, as any engagement helps the algorithm, but it is important to realize that growing your reach is so much more than just basic follower numbers.

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Thanks!

Twitter: maplethistles

Good

luck!

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