Marketing budget etc?

[Mrs MiCo Games]

We're not too far away from finishing our first game and it's about time to start thinking about what type of marketing we should do.

What has in your experience been the most worthwhile thing you've done for getting your game known to the public?

Aprox how much have you spent on marketing? money? time? What results did you get from the different things you did?

Any recommendations on what NOT to do?

Thanks in advance!

[alfie]

Before you market the game and develop marketing strategies it would be more effective if your target market is tightly defined. I know it's not always possible to define the target market at pre-release, especially with limited resources and innovative titles from indy developers. But still, do you know who your target market is?

Alfie

[Cuculain]

If you look at the game - in this case I would say it is pretty clear what the market is.

[papillon]

IN *that* case you can always set up an affiliate program and list it on all the adult webmaster sites - they're always looking for new products to push. (Or swap links with the Naked Chicks On Bikes guy?)

[MiCo Games]

Thanks for the suggestions :-) Actually, the game is a lot more innocent than it might appear at a brief glance. There's no nudity in it, and no sexual references. It does feature dancing girls that have money thrown at them, and consumption of alcoholic bewerages. But it's not an Adult game as such.

Anyway, back on topic: Any general marketing advice on what to do and what not to do?

[Cuculain]

Sorry, I couldn't help trying to be funny. I understand that this is a sim game with a somewhat mature theme. Perhaps you can attempt to reach a 'cool casual/student' market akin to Dope Wars, which I think is very successful.

Anyway, good luck, especially since you are fellow swedes...

[Sillysoft]

The best marketing bang for buck I have gotten is from google. Pick a few targeted phrases and then try and get to the top of google for them. I was able to get onto the first page for a 'risk game' search, which has been quite good for me. As you can see from my sig, I am now trying to target another key phrase.

[papillon]

If there's no actual nudity, a slight refinement in name might be a good idea. I can picture a lot of people getting excited and downloading a "stripper game" and then being quite upset if they don't really strip - on the other hand, some people would be put off downloading because they'd think there WOULD be nudity.

Unfortunately, I'm having trouble thinking of a good word to describe "bar where girls dance in bikinis and do not actually get naked".

Or maybe I'm just being silly... after all, stripclubs in MTV music videos never get actually nude.

[MiCo Games]

I see your point, and if the name would turn out to be a problem, we would certainly give a go at changing it.

I'd also like to mention that we intend to make a post later on, when we're closer to release, asking for feedback on the game. While some feedback might be of relevance to this thread, I think a lot of it can be saved for that later thread. (This is not aimed at you, papillon, as your concerns about the name ARE relevant. It's just a precaution so as not to have the thread stray off topic).

[Mark Fassett]

I'm willing to bet, I think with the current name, if you don't have nudity, you won't make much money. But if you added nudity (not saying you should), you're much more likely to make some serious money. Especially if the game is any good.

[Jack Norton]

Nice, another game made with Poser and DAZ models

I hope seriously that you put some nudity on it, or either stop making such a game. Who you think could be interested in a Strip management game with NO nudity!!??
You won't think to sell that game in the casual game market or in the family-friendly market?
I strongly suggest you to put some nudity on it and if the game is even good, it could sell really well. Leaving as it is, it could be a big failure, IMHO.

[MiCo Games]

Yes yes, thanks for your feedback and all that, much appreciated. There will be another thread at a later time where we can discuss these kind of things. This is not the time (game not done yet) or the place (indie business forum) for that sort of thing.

The question we were asking was not "How should we market our game?" or "How can we improve our game?". We were asking people for any experiences they had to share from their own marketing efforts. We would like it if we all could try and stay on topic for this thread, as we figure that it is a topic that is of great interest for all developers, especially those, like us, who are new to selling games.

And don't worry, there WILL be another thread where we will ask for your feedback on our game, its name and its concept.

[Curiosoft]

Who you think could be interested in a Strip management game with NO nudity!!??

Hey,

I hope this is your next game. It sounds really funny. I think it's one indie title that many folks would buy.

Call it USM -- Universal Strip Manager

Later,
Curiosoft

[MattInglot]

Direct marketing expenses for CustomBar so far have been in the $100 range with only two purchases: download.com listing and Shareware Tracker. I've been so busy the past month tapping out the free resources available to be spending much money. I do have plans on posting banner ads on a select few sites.

Shareware Tracker was definitel worth the $15. CustomBar listed on over 100 download sites as a result. The actual downloads that come from these sites are extremely small and with the exception of one or two sites they don't make a terrible amount of difference. The effect on search engine presence has been terrific though. You can search CustomBar on google now and get relevant results for 25 pages.

The download.com listing brings in a steady traffic of 15-40 downloads per day with the total count being at 780 according to download.com It has been exactly a month since it was posted there. Considering that I've gotten more downloads for free from other places this 780 visitors was quite expensive. In the long run it will definitely be a valuable source of traffic though. If I get 700 downloads each month from there that's 8400 downloads in a year. I imagine with a game like Strip Club Tycoon you will probably get much much more downloads due to the adult nature of the game.

I've found the hardest challenge to be maintaining traffic after the initial release. It is easy to get thousands and thousands of visitors to your site when you have just released a product, but much harder after all those news posts fall into the archives of the news pages.

The best advice I can give is to not ignore the power of free advertising. So far one site and one forum have been responsible for about 40% of total unique visitors (not to be confused with downloads) to the custombar.net site. Simply getting a posting in the right place can drive your traffic through the roof.

[Jack Norton]

Shareware tracker is very useful indeed.
Paying the 79$ on download.com isn't really worth it in my opinion.
Much better paying 50$ for the Terin PR service which brought to me over 5000 visitors for UBM (over 15-20 days).
I never got anything from banners on sites - wasn't worth it any time I tried it so I guess I'll stop :P
Another useful thing is to produce a freeware (in your case could be a screensaver) that points to your site.

[Greg Squire]

I curious as to what tools everyone is using to know this kind of information. I know that you could look at the referer in the HTTP header to know where they came from before they hit a page on your site. Are you just capturing this into a log somehow?

[MattInglot]

AwStats web stats is what I use for now. I plan on adding some additional tracking features through PHP that aren't easily accomplished by reading logs. There are also client-side web stats programs that can give you far greater information than a server-side program, since CPU use isn't an issue.

http://www.lizardnetwork.com/images/sample_awstats.png

Sample AwStats page.

[terin]

While people can relate all sorts of success and failure stories, you went about this question in the wrong way.

What makes you think that your game shares a common bond between Lizard Soft's Custom Bar and Jack Norton's Universal Boxing Manager?

The second post, which was so innaccurately deflated, was the one you should be paying the most attention to. Define your target. Before you can ask anyone their opinion of what worked you need to know who REALLY will be buying this game. Therefore, maybe its NOT such a crazy thing to probe your game design before you talk of marketing methods.

I know, this post is sounding pretty harsh, sorry! I'm not here to tell you what to do or not to do with your game (unless you hire me to do that, in which case you can ask anyone I work with that I tell them they suck on a regular basis).

Once you have determined who you want to target, build your game around that. Once you really have nailed that target demographic's interest, THEN you begin by asking the first question which SHOULD be asked: "Who would know about this kind of marketing?"

The answer probably isn't going to be Lizard's or Jack's advice, even though it is very useful advice for their target.

So, after all this typing: Here's my tip.

Ask the man who created Dopefarmer (I consider him a friend of mine and I would wager he'd offer his advice readily). His demographic is going to be bang on close to yours I bet ;-). There's a starting point... good luck.

Alternatively, you can just hire me and let me worry about this kinda crap :-)

Sincerely,

[Jack Norton]

The answer probably isn't going to be Lizard's or Jack's advice, even though it is very useful advice for their target.

My best advice probably was:
"Much better paying 50$ for the Terin PR service "

Hehe, well I agree completely with you, Dope farmer audience should be almost the same of that game

[Mrs MiCo Games]

What makes you think that your game shares a common bond between Lizard Soft's Custom Bar and Jack Norton's Universal Boxing Manager?

To be honest... not much except one thing. We're all developing products on (I assume) a very limited budget.

I agree with you that we can not copy another products marketing strategy and that was never the intention of my posting. Neither was my intention to get free advice from you or others on what to do with our game (even though I'm sure you guys know what you're talking about).

The reason from me posting is that I thought that this could be a question that could benefit many of the members in the community. Maybe someone had success with a method I or someone else never had thought about? Maybe someone has good marketingideas that has worked for them that were really cheap? Maybe someone had hired you terin with good results... or maybe bad?

I really apreciate that all of you have taken the time to write answers even though some of them wasn't what we asked for

[terin]

Like I said in my post somewhere in the middle: It sounds like I am being harsh but im not! I promise :-)

My next article going up on gamedev.net discusses making and using contacts to your advantage. The very first piece of useful advice (taken right from the text) is:

"The first contacts you should make in the game industry, strangely enough, are other developers! You should e-mail the people who have created similar games to you. Some of them won’t write back, others not only will write back but give you hints and tips on what worked and what didn’t. All the marketing knowledge in the world doesn’t always promise success, but I would heed the advice of someone who has done what you are trying to do."

I think asking for advice is totally the right thing to do, I think this board is the perfect place to do it. If the post is intended to inform the general public, that is awesome, my post applies to everyone.

Seek advice from your peers. It doesn't hurt to know what has worked for other types of products, sometimes that stuff transfers over.

Jack says Download.com isn't worth his time, and he may be right. I do know a client of mine has a listing on download.com that has generated 86,000 downloads. Now, download.com has a notoriously bad conversion rate, but im inclined to believe that after 86,000 downloads he has recouped his 80 dollars :-)

So there's some more kindling.

Advertising works when done right, but expect it to take some invested money to find out what works. Even if you hire me assume that the first set of ads will have some losers in it (I try to spread the first set of ads out over a few different target ideas, since nobody has yet come to me with a definate target audience. This way we can determine what works and proceed from there).

I'm rambling... original point: Don't let my post stop you from asking these important questions. The purpose of my post was to give you insight into how important knowing where the poster's views are coming from is... it is almost more important that the advice its self.

[Chris Evans]

I've found the hardest challenge to be maintaining traffic after the initial release. It is easy to get thousands and thousands of visitors to your site when you have just released a product, but much harder after all those news posts fall into the archives of the news pages.

The best advice I can give is to not ignore the power of free advertising. So far one site and one forum have been responsible for about 40% of total unique visitors (not to be confused with downloads) to the custombar.net site. Simply getting a posting in the right place can drive your traffic through the roof.

I definitely agree with you there Lizardsoft. When I announced my game early last month, I got a huge burst of traffic. It lasted for about 2-3 weeks. Once all the news articles dropped to the news archives, my traffic dropped quite a bit as well.

Though I'm still receiving a lot more traffic than before I announced my game. However, it would have still been nice to somehow be able to maintain a higher level of traffic without such a big drop.

Like Lizardsoft, I also benefited from a few forums talking about the game. I'd say I probably got the most newsletter signups from people who found out about the game through a forum.

Also even though news articles only have a lifetime of about a couple weeks, don't underestimate them because they can go toward your search engine ranking over the long-term, especially if a popular site ran your article.

[Morphecy]

@Mrs MiCo Games: Maybe you could also contact guys who did Lovechess ( www.lovechess.nl ) and ask for partnering and hints how to publish your game.

[Jack Norton]

I do know a client of mine has a listing on download.com that has generated 86,000 downloads. Now, download.com has a notoriously bad conversion rate, but im inclined to believe that after 86,000 downloads he has recouped his 80 dollars :-)

What game is it?
I don't know anyone who has even had more than 15-20k downloads from that site... even my game USM that has been there for one year has reached only 20k.
You sure he didn't purchase the silver plan and spend 99$ /month for 3 months?

[terin]

But the game is older than 1 year ;-) so... it takes time. But time is what you have as an indie developer! You haven't limited yourself to a retail cycle. 20k in 1 year and you haven't made 4 sales to pay it off? By the looks of it, the latest game which has been out for 1 month has pulled in nearly 6,000 downloads. The game which has been out for multiple years is still pulling in over 25/week.

So, if you can reach 15k in the first year and 25/wk from then on:

Is it worth 80 dollars to get 15,000 for year 1 and 1,300 for all subsiquent years? Well, maybe, maybe not. Download.com still represents a fairly large percent of the total downloads from this client and they are doing quite well :-) I'll ask him if he minds revealing who he is and send you a priv msg.