Hi, In a couple of months, after some more polishing, I will be releasing another game. However I really want to get the marketing side done properly. Here are some questions coming from a game developer (rather than a marketing guy) 1) I would really like to get the marketing side off my chest. It's not my bread and butter. Would you suggest a PR company/individual with a good track record or would you do it yourself? If you did yourself what effective things did you do? In my last game, I had sent several requests for review of Buttonia but it never got reviewed. That was pretty frustrating. 2) If you contacted a PR company/individual, did you settle on a % of sales? Or on a fixed sum? And how much %/$? 3) When did you start marketing your game? Is 6 weeks before launch enough? 4) Let's say you've done a great game, and it got noted by Apple. So you would be riding the N&N wave. What should one do? How much % of the revenue would be spent back on more marketing? And more importantly where? 5) I've tried Admob to advertise but didn't have any success. I've read in other threads that they had quite good feedback. How much should one spend on such advertising services to start seeing some returns? Hopefully with your suggestions I could make some kind of marketing plan.
I guess it just depends on your budget. If you're an indie dev like me, I wouldn't pay for any advertising. I work for a PR company by day (thought I'm a developer), and if you can afford it, it certainly helps. Good PR people have relationships with bloggers so you'd have a better chance of getting coverage. Our app is currently featured in N&N and we didn't spend a penny on marketing, but to be fair, we also got zero coverage on launch day (and still none from TouchArcade.. there's still time, guys! haha.). Don't get discouraged when you e-mail blogs and they don't write about you or don't respond. They all get tons of mail every day, that even great games get overlooked. My advice is to make a spreadsheet of all the pubs you want to reach out to and write a thoughtful, compelling e-mail that will get the writers interested. You have to tell your story, so finding the best way to tell it so that the writers you're telling to can relate to it seems to work the best. Keep track of who you've e-mailed and had conversations with, who has covered you, etc. Use Compete.com to see how big blogs are and if they are legit review sites or not. Don't send a press release, write an e-mail! Press releases are dead. Bloggers hate them. We live in the age of conversation and press releases are only really effective for larger companies with PR companies. If you're a scrappy, hungry indie dev, embrace it! That's part of your story! I'm sure plenty will disagree with me on this, but I swear by it and I've gotten my previous two apps (Robotvision, Future Checkin) covered in hundreds of major pubs like TechCrunch, Mashable, etc. Be you, tell your story, and be interesting! For example, our game is based off of a Flash game my business partner built in 2007. It got featured by Download Squad as a "daily time waster" that got it pretty popular (though the review was mixed), so when we launched Ramps, we sent them an e-mail expressing our gratitude for the original post, and how we took their feedback and made our iOS game leaps and bounds better than the original. It took a couple weeks, but they ended up covering our new game Ramps, and they had nothing but glowing praise this time around. I know how you feel though, I still feel freaking clueless about marketing because I'm totally a coder, but like anything else, with time investment and practice you will develop finesse.
The budget is to keep it as near to zero as possible Interesting link there... I will check it out in more detail later. Thanks for the tips. Good luck with Ramps. IMHO it's much better than Angry Birds. I guess their marketing was top notch.
@ U2elan - wow thanks for sharing your insight in marketing. I am also preparing our marketing strategy for Captain Nemo's Legacy. I was also adviced to make press releases but i think i will reconsider making it more personal and compelling. Are there any more marketing people out there that are willing to share insights?
Wow, thank you! We simply tried to make the best game we could. I really admire Rovio's success with Angry Birds, though. (who doesn't?) Yep, but they had to pay for that marketing with a big chunk of revenue share. Regardless, I'd still happily take even just 15% of that pie.
Yes however I didn't have much details from them, since they want a polished beta before they give you any revenues share details. The specific publisher I had contacted seemed very secretive of what they do as if they are doing some voodoo magic or something for their marketing
The reason why I mentioned it is because I am starting to think there are more benefits to going to a publisher than to try to market it a game yourself. Sure, you will be handing over as much as half of your profits but the benefits will come from in the form of proper feedback as well as being partnered with people that know the business/marketing better than most of us do. I promised myself by my third project I would partner with a publisher but as I am polishing up my second game, I am starting to doubt the use of marketing it by myself like paying for promotional services, especially in today's market. Is there anyone here that used a publisher that regretted it?
I second this. What are the options available nowadays? I only know of Chillingo... there have to be more out there.
ngcomo are interested in indie developers, although now they are most interested if you have social features. http://www.ngmoco.com/gamemakers/contact.php
Yes, they have changed all their games to freemium and they track every single action that the users do to try to find how to make the game addictive for players and make them buy virtual items, etc.
Recently I have discovered DailyAppDream.com who are also publishing games. They are doing the free-app of the day scheme (and that is free as well for devs), but they are also re-branding/publishing new IP. They apparently take 30% for that. http://www.dailyappdream.com/Developers.html
Can you elaborate more on the re-branding and publishing? I couldn't find anything on the site, just about the free app a day stuff.
I believe they take your app, reskin and polish it and then publish it, giving you a second chance for your game and share of the proceeds. That may sound more cynical than I think they are. AssyriaGameStudio is the forum member you want to speak to about this.
What kind of game are you making? I noticed buttonia, not sure if that's the game. Consider this: - Freeimum app with iAds (you'll reach more user's and possibly make more than 70c off a user through ads than the 0.99 paid price point) - In app purchase to remove ads (gravy on top from the people that really like your game) - Put some advertising dollars where it matters most to your app. If you are making a game like buttonia (puzzle, word, board) pm me and I'll give you some advice on what we are doing. (PM me) - Have a website, facebook, twitter page spamming about your new game I believe the app store is over saturated and it does take money to make money (unless really lucky). - Make sure you have a really good polished product thats fully tested. Matt
Yeah it is us that's running Daily App Dream (although it's a subsidury company) - feel free to ping me an e-mail if interested... Essentially the platform is growing quite quickly and I control the Add's being served... Also got a fair amount of VC backing which I'm pushing the platform with. The re-publishing side is working with developers to: 1) Re-brand it based on the data we're gathering from users (obviousally having that number of users sending us their "dreams"/ most desired apps gives us some fairly conscise data about what artstyles and genres are most appealing to users - there is a LOT of data there, and in future updates I'm now adding features to the platform to gather addittional data in terms of click-thrus on certain apps so I can get a even more conscice view of what users really want). 2) We pay to have the press-releases sent out/ contact friends at apples marketing department/ pull in a few favours from reviewers that are friends etc. 3) Allocate some of the Daily App Dream advertising space (in e-mails, in the app and on the web) to pushing the apps we publish. Initially on launch we'll allocate a large portion of the advertising space to it... Then follow it up every 6 or so weeks with a period where the add is on rotation on the platform... In terms of %'s it varies... I can get an artist to re-do the art for developers, which obviousally takes up more time therefore a greater % etc. I was speaking to xenonii about Buttonia - Which is fairly simplistic artwise so it wouldn't take too long to do the re-branding for hence 30%. Obviousally come along with a 3D racing game that needs re-branding and you want me to handle that side of things then that % inevitably increases (and if the costs are so high that I'm not sure if a return will be made then changes are it wouldn't be of as much interest). But yeah I'm trying to be as fair as possible with the percentages we're working on... I'm only promoting stuff where I genuinley thing I can make the developers more money by helping than they could without (so if your game is selling very well already / in excess of $5000 per month then this isn't for you... It's for the neat, games that failed to gain traction due to either weak launch marketing, or just miss-targeting the demographic based on the genre vs artstyle which I can actually bring some added value, beyond simply the advertising on the Daily App platform...
