Issue #7 - The Marketing Grind
Making a game as a solo dev with no experience in coding or artwork is tough. There's no two ways around it, it's just a lot of work. Every single day, there's some new role I'm fulfilling, whether it's a tester, animator, or community manager. But nothing really prepared me for what probably the hardest role of all: marketing team. In this issue, I'll go into my history in marketing and the "Marketing Grind" as I've come know and love.
Marketer By Education, Not By Practice
My experience with marketing has been super limited, but not because of lack of interest. I just feel like I haven't had many opportunities to flex my marketing muscles. I was actually a marketing major in undergrad, and studied everything from brand management to consumer behaviors. But straight out of school, I got a job with the federal government writing procurement contracts. This field is business related (Purchasing), but very limited in how it called upon the marketing skills I learned. And I've been in this field ever since, moving cities and agencies over the past 15 years but not really using my degree in the way most of my peers did.
So in making this game and trying to generate interest for it, I had to delve deep into my memory bank and pull forward some concepts that I learned all those years ago. I could remember some general ideas, but the more I thought about it the more I became a little icked out by some of the concepts. KPIs, heuristics, and Maslow's hierarchy of needs are great and all, but I think the one thing I wanted to focus on above all else was to just be honest and genuine in my messages.
After all, Barty's Adventure is a game all about being your true self and making your own choices. By showing any potential audience who I am and why I want to make this game, I feel like I can make a greater connection than jumping on the latest TikTok trend. So with "be genuine" as my North Star, I started to figure out how I wanted to reach that audience.
Don't Change That Channel
In doing research as to where I should share the game, I started by making a list of where I thought an interested audience may be. This included not only the traditional social media platforms like Twitter/X or TikTok, but also Discord and Reddit as well. I figured sharing far and wide is a good plan, but to also be conscientious and understanding that communities don't want to be shilled to. So each of these channels takes a slightly different touch:
Discord
I'm hesitant to even call Discord a marketing channel, because that makes it seem like I searched out particular servers and communities only to promote Barty's Adventure. In reality, it's more of the opposite: I am in a bunch of communities that I really enjoy and appreciate, and I post about Barty once in awhile in their respective self-promotion channels. I know that I'm probably limiting myself by not targeting specific servers or by asking for permission from mods before posting, but I enjoy being a part of these communities and I wouldn't want others to come in just to throw ads at us. And I guess the Barty's Adventure Discord is a type or marketing as well. I hope that it can grow into a community for the game, but that will be a slow burn as I further develop the game.
Reddit has probably been my most active marketing channel. Every Monday, I schedule a week's worth of posts to various subreddits, such as r/solodevelopment, r/indiedev, and r/wholesomegames. Before I started posting content, I reached out to the mods of each subreddit and got permission to make posts that include the game's name and links to Discord. While it's been interesting to have conversations in the comments on each post, I don't know how much activity it's generating to the itch page of the latest build or the Discord group. Still, I feel like the game is at least known now in certain communities and hopefully I can build off of this foundation.
Twitter/X
This one is my least favorite, only because of my personal relationship with social media. Around three years ago, I quit all social media (Instagram, Facebook, Twitter) because I didn't love how it made me feel. It also became a huge timesink with long sessions of unproductive, endless scrolling. So coming back to Twitter after years gone was a hard experience. I have just this week started to promote more regularly on there, but I found myself endlessly scrolling again. So I put a timer on my phone limiting my usage of the app. Hopefully I can manage posts and comments in the limited time I have available without getting back into my old unhealthy habits.
Newsletter
Hey! It's you guys! I wanted a place that would allow me to go deeper into my dev process and provide more insight into how the entire project was going. A newsletter seemed like the best idea. And even though this may be my smallest audience right now, I consider you the most loyal! But shhh... don't let the Twitter-heads know.
More to Come
I have so many other avenues that I want to pursue. TikTok is HUGE for game discovery, so once I get more developed I hope to jump into that mess (if it's not banned by then). Streamers and journalists could be big for the game as well in reaching a much larger audience, but I'm still around six months away from all of that. I'm sure there are more ways to reach people out there, but that's all I can think of off of the top of my head. Seems like enough, right?
So that's the main strategy for now: Discord for the community, Twitter/Reddit for fun updates, and Newsletter for the deeper thoughts. It seems like I have all of my bases covered and the rationale is sound behind each channel. It's just making all of the messages (on top of making a game!) that is the challenge. I'm sure if I keep grinding though, it will eventually pay off!
Talk to you soon! 😄
This newsletter is an update series for the development of the game Barty's Adventure. If you are interested in continuing the conversation, please join the community Discord server: https://discord.gg/M7p2Mtgkyx. Your input in these early stages of the game are invaluable and much appreciated. Thanks!
