There was an era when marketing was seen as off-limits and almost totally ignored by indie game developers. However in current times, developers have realized its significance and are applying efforts to make the best use of it. As a video game creative marketing agency, we will be using our specialty in this post to explore some of our video game marketing methods, with benefits of exposure for your video game(s).
What’s the issue?
The gaming world went wild around the year 2008, a period that saw some creative developers releasing games that became widely acclaimed and niche busting masterworks. Blend the success of these games with the launch of the App Store during that period, and the outcome was tons of aspiring coders and designers that desired striking riches. While some of the newbie game developers required time to refine their craft, other highly seasoned developers built great games. Well – some made enough money and then some others did not.
What then was the issue? Game design and development became so rampant that almost everyone began building games, proving at the same time to be both a blessing and a curse. Several games are being released daily into the marketplace; however, developers have to combine smart marketing techniques alongside game top quality. You have to be able to creatively market your video games in order to breakthrough in current times.
Prior to delving into the basics, let’s dismiss the common assumption that assumes marketing can only start after a game is launched or released. As majority already are aware, a game draws the bulk of its sales within the first few days/weeks of release. Where required channels do not already know about your game title by the time it’s released into the market, your sales might suffer during such a crucial window period. Thus, rather than waiting until the eleventh hour, you can peruse and apply the following video game marketing methods below – to your success:
Logo Design
As soon as you have something that exemplifies the fundamental mechanics and appearance of your video game, start the marketing campaign! Logo design is one effective means to achieve this. It doesn’t matter if it is a final render, a mockup created with Photoshop, or some piece of demo that reveals a nuance of your game, it is essential that you begin generating hype for the game as soon as there is something worth showing to the general public or target audience. With a properly designed logo portraying your game, you can promote your game on a semi-regular basis. With your video game logo, you can creatively begin marketing your game much earlier – at relevant forums and on social media channels, websites, and blogs.
So whether your website serves as a home point for your entire video game collection, or targeted directly to only one; it requires being updated often and departmentalized. Your website should feature a drawn-out overview and appealing shots (a well-designed logo in this case).
Using Trailers
With trailers, this is undoubtedly one of the single most vital things you can do to get individuals excited about playing your game. As far as it isn’t overloaded with cheesy titles, and is done professionally to produce a compelling video, it’s rewarding. It should be well targeted at every facet of gameplay – clearly displaying the video game’s title and name of company. With its many advantages, a success-driven video game company can never have too many trailers in the scene. A typical trailer can appear as a combat demo, while another as an intro to the game’s world and story line. The third can be dedicated to the game’s central character. When properly developed and spaced – it becomes a great way to generate hype for your video game.
Check out this action-packed game trailer we made for the Planes mobile game!
Social Media Banners
Making the best use of social media opportunities can help boost a video game’s launch and sales prospects. Social media is an integral part of an effective video game marketing process. A video game’s project can be professionally designed and displayed using social media banners to promote the game. Once a creative social media banner has been developed around the game, you can post on various social media channels such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, among others.
Among the aforementioned channels, Twitter happens to be the one that offers game developers the easiest access to prospective audiences or fans, press members and other flourishing developers; thus, this is a tip to consider as long as you play it intelligently. Furthermore, ensure to have your website linked to your social media accounts, and regularly update the pages, keeping things fresh and current – alongside the display of social media banners.
Press Kits
A press kit is another result-oriented method for marketing video games. With it, you can creatively reach out to the press. The press is quite a crucial part of running an up-and-coming video game marketing campaign. Disregarding it can place your game at severe disadvantage. However, it is one thing to communicate your video game to the press, and it is another to do it effectively with the perfect kit.
Once the right press kit has been developed for your game, go on to announce its launch telling the press who you are and a little info about your game. Make the best use of press kits as you send press members functional copies of your video game.
Check out this awesome press kit we made for Yu-Gi-Oh!
Using a press release to market your video game can be very effective. You can forward press release content to PR firms online and offline – doing it about a week prior to the game’s release date.
App screenshots can be creatively designed by a professional game marketing agency. App screenshots serve as a first impression of what your app offers to consumers and also as a very powerful tool to keep potential users engaged. App screenshots serve as great medium to provide ideas and mini tutorials on how to utilize an app prior to launching. They have actually become a very essential tool in a developer’s competitive world of downloads.
App screenshots can help you achieve 2 things with your game marketing goals:
Grab the attention of the potential customer
Convince them to download your app
Making an appearance at a trade show is the perfect way to reach gamers! Get WAYPOINT to help you set up and manage a booth and with a well-executed trade show contest, your video game marketing objectives can be achieved. It practically can be the ideal thing that you need to enliven your game event marketing endeavors. It can help build up a huge audience and traffic for your video games and help generate additional opportunities to engage with prospects. Check out how visually impactful trade show activations can be! Here’s a booth activation we produced for Twitch:
You can professionally engage fans and prospects with short videos of your iOS or Android app in action, right on the App Store. When you show what it takes to utilize your app, app previews will help individuals to better understand your app/game and boost more downloads.
Well-developed app previews reveal functionality, features and user interface of a video game/app in a brief video that people watch within the App Store. Such app previews can last up to 30 seconds long.
Key art can help create that lasting impression you need for success in a video game marketing campaign! In this regard, key art can be referred to as an iconographic image that forms the basis upon which a video game marketing campaign is built. On a more practical note, it is the image that appears in magazine ads, posters, and on DVD or Blu-Ray Covers, among others.
From a graphic design viewpoint, key art can extend from films to intellectual properties. A video game cover should have distinctive key art that can be repurposed across marketing campaigns. Key art is iconic and memorable!
A creative key art should have the power to evoke emotion and deliver a message. Creating perfect key art is one of the more challenging areas of graphic design; however, there are experts that are well experienced at generating it – luckily you found an excited team of experts at WAYPOINT 🙂
In conclusion, a video game marketing campaign that is worth doing is worth doing right!
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