Newbie question: how adverstisement and marketing work...

[moonpxi]

...for indie games??

I am seeing a lot of talk about it around here, but am still trying to figure it out the big picture. Do you guys advertise your games through partnership sites, or something, right? Like download.com and real.com?

This is, in itself, the marketing aspect of indie games? And, as I've seen a few times around, this is also a key part in the indie business, right?

[svero]

Well there's no magic formula here. Everyone who writes games is trying to do what they can to attract attention whether that be submitting to sites like download.com, finding online publishers, advertising or anything else. I'd say that most small developers try to use "guerilla marketing" techniques first and do very little paid advertising.

Some Common guerilla marketing techniques are...

Search engine optimization, Ads, Press releases, Free Demos/download site submissions, banner exchanges, and newsletters.

Advertising and marketing with money is a whole other complicated subject though.

[Sid Egg]

Really? I would have thought more complex forms of Viral Marketing would do better. Like, have a demo, and maybe give someone something (10 free levels?) for every 10 people they send it to or whatever... Even the 'accidental' littering ones that was talked about at Dexterity

[papillon]

I tried doing a demo that pressured people to link to it in their livejournals... but only a few people did so. Probably didn't mange to find the right marketing to hit the LJ people in the first place.

[svero]

Really? I would have thought more complex forms of Viral Marketing would do better. Like, have a demo, and maybe give someone something (10 free levels?) for every 10 people they send it to or whatever... Even the 'accidental' littering ones that was talked about at Dexterity

Well i pointed out the most common things people do. Viral marketing is another technique that people use. You want to do everything you can really. Every bit counts. I haven't seen any evidence that viral marketing is more than just another bit though. Maybe word of mouth is the strongest marketing tool, but it comes mostly from the quality of the game and probably not so much from freebees or contest incentives.

[MattInglot]

Word of mouth is great, but it's also extremely difficult to achieve. I agree with svero that it's just another bit. You can't expect to be able to rely entirely on it unless you've planned a "purple cow" from the beginning (and then you have no guarantee your purple cow will work until you release it).