Marketing can feel very challenging and overwhelming for the best of us, but it’s something that you can’t ignore and have to get your head around if you want your game to be successful. That doesn’t mean it has to all be really painful!
I’m Ninichi and I’m a game music and film music composer. I’ve worked with lots of different indie game developers and indie game studios helping them with their music, but I also believe in helping indie projects generally and marketing is a key component that crops up very often! Through my blog, I try to support projects I’ve been involved in and believe in by featuring them and introducing them to my audience. I also try to share tips, resources and ideas that I hope will make things easier all-round for you.
Here are some thoughts on how to approach your marketing in order to make it easier for you to implement and thus less painful, but still work well and be effective…
1) Identify which marketing channels you feel most comfortable with
You will probably hear people give you lots of advice about which channels to market you need to be exploring and using for your game e.g. contact YouTubers, create a devblog, use Twitter, Facebook, share videos etc.. – however, my advice would be to explore them sure, but then focus on the ones that appeal most to you.
There’s no point setting up lots of things and then being bad across all of them! Find the ones you’re most comfortable using and then stick with making those really work for you. You do not need to do everything and in reality, it’s impossible to do everything or at least to do it all well. So don’t bother. Pick what you feel you can do best and do it well.
2) Use automation to help
It’s important to communicate directly with your audience and to be there in the moments, however, you don’t need to be there all the time. There are various scheduling and automation tools that can help you to manage your social media and other marketing campaigns effectively. They can save you lots of time and enable you to focus on other things.
Explore tools like Hootsuite / Buffer / IFTTT / Sprout Social as a starting point.
3) Carve out time to be ‘social’
You don’t need to communicate with the outside world all the time. It may not be something that comes naturally to you, in which case carve out and schedule time during which you can accomplish what you have to. E.g. pick a day each week or month where you organise all of your tweets or blog posts or when you go out to meet people and talk about your game.
If it’s scheduled in, you’ll be sure to do it but you won’t need to think about it all the time. You can prepare for it mentally and/or you can at least manage your marketing activities more easily.
4) Focus on quality and consistency over quantity
The key to successful marketing is consistency. There’s no point in creating loads of content and sharing it all over the place if it’s no good and if it’s done on a random or ad hoc basis. It’s important to make sure that what you share is great and that you share it on a regular basis.
Create a rhythm to your marketing and stick with it. That way it becomes part of your routine and you’ll be sure to deliver great content all the time. For your audience, they will begin to know what to expect from you and when, and this builds loyalty, trust and genuine excitement within your community.
So, there you have it! 4 tips or thoughts that I hope will help you to approach your marketing strategy with greater enthusiasm and help to make it less painful in the long run!
If you’d like to have your game featured on my blog or would like some help with the music to your game, do get in touch now or feel free to explore the rest of my site to listen to examples of my music or to check out other tips/resources on my blog.
About the author: Ninichi is a freelance game music composer and film music composer. She creates music for indie games, films, podcasts, tv shows, commercials and more.
She is an incredibly diverse composer with an extensive credit list to her name. If you'd like help with music for any project, feel free to contact her now.
Follow her @ninichimusic
