Hello! I lurk around these boards a lot and see lots of the same questions popping up re: marketing, and how to build awareness for your game. I thought it might be helpful to put together a little list of action points - broken down into pre-launch and launch - with some best-practice and accompanying resources where necessary.
I've kept things fairly top level here, as don't want this to become an essay. Marketing for games is a complex beast that covers many platforms and disciplines - each with their own dedicated jobs in AAA games - and the below is very much just the broad strokes. There's plenty more that could be said for each one of the points below, so please give me a shout if anything can be clarified further.
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PRE-LAUNCH
CREATE YOUR BRAND ASSETS
Your brand assets are everything a consumer/player will see about your game before they actually get their hands on it. They will make their mind up about your game exclusively from these assets. These assets need to accurately represent your game, and distil what it's all about with as much impact as possible (this is the world of my day job, by the way, there's a lot of work that happens here). You'll want to work on these alongside the development of the game itself - the earlier the better. The list below could be plenty longer, but at the bare minimum you'll want to create:
- Trailer
- Language/Descriptions - you'll need language at varying lengths for various places, but create a razor (or 'X' Statement), short (one sentence) and long description (one paragraph) for your game in addition to bulleted feature list.
- Key Art - traditionally box-art, this will likely be your main store/capsule imagery.
- Screenshots - 6 minimum. Try to show the breadth of your games features, and diversity of environments/characters/etc
- A great .gif!
This ultimately will be what populates your store pages.
More on branding:
Mottos, Mantras and Mission Statements; 4 Steps to Studio Branding
The Big Game Branding 101
How to get your game across in five seconds (Amazing talk on the importance of GIFs and how to make 'em. Thomas Reisenegger is the king of this)
Creating a GIF for your game
BUILD YOUR CHANNELS
Again, apologies if this is bleedingly obvious, but ensure your studio* has the following channels all set up and good to go in preparation for the announce/release of your game:
*studio over game, if possible - this will ensure future games build off the hard work of your channel building and can be re-used for the next project!
- Twitter - don't exclusively promote yourself; follow and interact with other studios and developers. Use the #screenshotsaturday, #indiedevhour, #indiedev and #gamedev hashtags to share your content where appropriate, and ensure others can find it and signal boost. Batch and schedule tweets weekly if you find the regularity tough.
- FB - slowly moving away from relevancy for game marketing, but good to create an initial grass roots community of your closer friends/family. Blanket invite your entire friends list to the page.
- Instagram - good for sharing in progress screens and videos. Thriving little IndieDev community here. Again, follow the #gamedev #indiedev etc hashtags, interact with similar content, and you'll slowly build a reciprocated following.
- YouTube - I'm a solo-dev so don't have time/resource to really take advantage of this channel. Other than trailers, though, BTS Studio Updates, Dev Let's Plays and VLOGs can all help boost the channel.
- Tumblr - I've yet to find much luck here, but have an account I post to regardless. Would be interested to hear others experiences here.
- Discord - I won't claim to be an expert here, am am still learning myself, but I've included a guide to getting the most out of Discord below.
- LinkedIn - yawn. Can't hurt depending on how seriously you're taking things, though. I've been tinkering with this recently.
- Mailing List - arguably the most important of the bunch. Direct marketing at its finest. Give an incentive for people to sign up (discount/eBook/demo etc), don't spam, keep consistent and regular updates. Watch your open-rates closely, and tweak your content (or when you send your content) based on what works and what doesn't. If your list snowballs and you're a studio with several games/products, use list segments wisely so you're not sending irrelevant content.
More on building social:
Getting the most out of Discord
Email Marketing 101: How to Actually Use Your Mailing List (Chris Zukowski is the master of email marketing, and I'd recommend signing up to his mailing list for more)
[TO BE UPDATED]
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LAUNCH
- Write a press release - this doesn't cost a penny and there's no reason not to do it (I'd actually recommend doing it before you write a line of code; it will help clarify your vision and envisage the end-product and proposition). If you can't condense your game into a press release, you'll struggle to sell it. Be sure to find an angle. It's often the story that is picked up on here, not a description of your game; find your hook (you developed the game in hospital, your game was made during a game jam on a boat, your game is the first to bring together genre[x] and genre[y] etc etc)
- Send your press release - most news editors have their email addresses on contact pages / twitter pages. Find them in advance. Build a list. Find writers interested in your genre/platform. Personalise the intro - don't blanket mail your entire list. Also sign up to GamesPress and submit to that - which will then be syndicated across gamasutra etc.
- Create a press kit, and link to it in press release - also ensure it's available on your website. Use presskit()
- Post on all your own channels (listed above), in addition to the below:
- Imugr - Imugr can have *amazing* virality with a little luck. Post your best screens/gifs, with the right tagging, and it could find the right crowd.
- IndieDB - set up studio/game pages; post your release news here
- Reddit - be sure to have an active account that regularly interacts with other content, then share your own news to the relevant channels (r/indiedev, r/gamedev r/adventuregames etc)
- Steam post - assuming your game is on Steam, ensure to post your Out Now blog/copy here.
- itch.io- obviously :) Write an Out Now dev log, opt into the press program, use this forum, and respond to content creators looking for games that might fit what you've worked on
- Genre-specific publications - for example, if your game is an Adventure game, post to AdventureGamers.com, or if it's an audio game, post to audiogames.net. You'll need to do a bit of research for this one.
- Do a giveaway! Gleam is *fantastic* for this, and will help boost your channels in the process. It needs $$$ to unlock more functionality, but is perfectly fine at a free level.
Resources:
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I by no means consider the above exhaustive and plan to update soon; please do send me other articles/guides you think would be a good fit here, and I will update this post with additional insight anybody may find useful.
If you have more specific questions or want to chat, hit me up on Discord. I also blast out similar articles and guides to my mailing list and Patreon page.
Thanks!