Article from my indie dev blog -- So about a month ago I published my second game. Never thought I would go this far, but I guess this really makes me an indie developer, no doubt about it. My first game was released last year, just a trial to understand the development and publishing process from start to finish. I outsourced everything. Obviously it did not give tangible results, but I learned a lot, which was the point. Now with my new game Planet Lander, I really want to go all the way with marketing strategies and tools for a lone indie dev like me. Just listing all my actions from the first month can work as a to-do list, since I’m quite positive these are all necessary things to accomplish for a successful launch. Is my game successful? Can’t say for now, but at least I did have some results. So read on: There are tons of great info on indie game marketing out there, but if I had to pick something that stands out, it’s this 3 hour video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sd2IHO2xBrY from http://vgamemarketing.com/ Watch all of it, and check out their site, it is extremely informative. The specific marketing elements to address, pretty much all at once and as soon as possible: ASO First, the name. I wanted two descriptive words. I needed “lander” since it’s a particular genre and checking with the tools listed below it’s not overcrowded. With some trials I ended up with “Planet Lander”, simple and to the point. Some say ASO is a waste of time; still it does not take too long to gather a list of words to help your store visibility. I used basic free tools from these ASO sites to help me determine what keywords to include in my store listings and how I rank in relation to direct “competitors”. https://www.mobileaction.co https://www.mobiledevhq.com/ https://sensortower.com/ On-line branding Built a landing page with a clear call to action for downloading the game on the available platforms. Made a press kit page, for all the info and assets related. http://dopresskit.com/ for guidelines. Twitter feed, Facebook page, Google+ page, Youtube channel with demos, LinkedIn page, Pinterest board. Anything and everything posted is spread across all. Review websites Emailed over 150 websites that are mobile game friendly, to ask for a review of Planet Lander, mention its release or list the game on the site. Some replied with offers for paid reviews. A couple of posts and tweets about the game, all giving a great instant boost in downloads. I’m sending a follow-up e-mail to all the sites that did not write back since a few weeks have passed and the results are very good if you get coverage. http://www.indiegamegirl.com/app-review-sites-comparison-tool/ (Good list to start with) http://videogamejournaliser.com/ (240 sites in 3 spreadsheets) Youtubers Contacted over 75 YouTubers that *might* be interested in reviewing mobile games. It’s much harder to record decent videos from handhelds screens, so very few are interested in mobile games. I got one video review (modest but friendly YouTuber), instant results; nothing else yet except a few followings on my Twitter account. http://videogamecaster.com/big-list-of-youtubers http://youtubers.brightside-games.com/ Press releases Published a press release for the launch of the game. Using only 3 press sites suggested by vgamemarketing.com/, (two are free, one is only 30$ for two releases) it got me a lot of visibility and added credibility. With this I got a great interview from GameZone about the inspiration for Planet Lander, that was awesome! http://prlog.org/ http://gamespress.com/ http://gamerelease.net/ Game Dev community Just started on Reddit, already got great feedback. Contributing to the diffrent indie forums such as this one. I used to write a blog about digital effects and running a VFX studio, I am going back to it with a game dev blog on all my efforts. With all this work I now have around 2,000 Android downloads and 500 iOS downloads; most of them from peaks following the actions above. Daily numbers are low but steady and growing each day. I’m happy to see return users every day and the feedback is good - so all I really need to do is get the game noticed. It is a lot of work, but I was prepared for it. I am still not certain of the short term results considering my lack of experience in this particular market. But every day I break new grounds, the numbers are growing slowly but surely and the feedback is good. Also I am a very stubborn entrepreneur so I will continue until I have tried everything I can. I wonder what’s better when contacting journalists and game review sites: send a short, concise message (it worked with the press release to get a thorough interview on GameZone) or throw all the information at hand, links and graphics in the message and help get your word out (it worked for instant coverage and mentions on some game review sites) And of course you can check out my game Planet Lander on the App store! -- Marc Bourbonnais Djee Games
Wow, congratulations for your success and thanks for sharing this. I agree, I've heard a lot of developers say ASO is not worth it but when you're an indie dev, all the money that's not going into paid marketing should be converted into ASO effort for organic discovery. You should check out Tasnim's comment here for better keyword research, it taught me a lot: http://iphonedevsdk.com/discussion/comment/496024#Comment_496024 Regarding journalists/game review sites, I think you should provide them with all the information they need to write a good article when it's for immediate release. Big website don't have time for countless e-mail exchanges. Good luck with your app and keep us posted!
Thanks for sharing your experience and insights, Marc. Some very useful resources there. I'm just in the process of launching our first iOS game and boy, this marketing and promotion stuff is a lot of work for someone who never did this before. I actually severely underestimated this aspect and only realized once I started learning about it. Cheers, and best of luck with your game and any future project.
Thanks for sharing such a detailed account of your experience! It's tough out there. Good luck to you!
Its a little disheartening you only have 2,500 downloads after all your marketing efforts. But obviously it would be a lot worse without those efforts!
Tks for the great post, it helped me alot for knowing the real harsh world out there. Still, with all that efforts and just 500 IOS downloads, that's just shocking news to me @_@
A few readers in this thread are disheartened to read about the resulting download numbers. I have to say a lot of this marketing work was done while the game was first published, bugs were fixed, all versions were updated and as I was hunting for information and contacts. It is common knowledge that the first 30-day window is crucial because you are tagged as a "new game" on Apple and Google, so you have additional exposure to work with. Combining all these efforts in a few days of intense PR is not that bad, really. I tend to look at it like a gamedev crunch without the bug-hunting and crashes. Thanks everyone for the encouragement.
Thanks for sharing! For a great Youtuber list I also recommend Youtube for Indies. I've been using this list for awhile.
Good info, appreciate the write-up. About to release our next game, but will probably cherry pick instead of doing a shotgun blast marketing approach. I figure if the game is good enough, it'll go viral. That's the hope. Feedback on your game after about 10 scenarios: it's basically lunar lander. Good: Name is interesting. Controls were simple, and it was easy to restart after a death. Bad: Art (especially UI/buttons) is amateurish. Go minimal or find a good artist. For example, a 2- or 3-color scheme would look more polished. Very little (no?) sound, no music. A bit simplistic with no rotation. No animation of the lander (would've been nice to see shock absorbers, legs breaking off and lander bouncing, better explosion, etc). The biggest weakness is there's nothing new that countless lander games have done before. Maybe the other planets have wind or other coolness, but I lost interest after 10 scenarios. The reason I point this out is marketing is fairly worthless if the product isn't new and exciting in some way. And in the competitive app store, even new and exciting products still fail with good marketing. Hope this is helpful feedback to you.
Wow, this is great. The effort you have put into marketing is fantastic great job, i'm currently in development of a game and I'm a little worried about the marketing side. You have done an awesome job by the looks of it, good on you
"If the game is good enough it will go viral" is not a good marketing approach. App discovery is probably one the largest issues any independent game developer will come across. Our games have accrued more than 2,000,000 downloads and I would attribute almost none of that to traditional marketing tactics. Unless you are a major brand or have plenty of capital for user acquisition, the reality of the matter is the ROI on most marketing attempts (for most indie developers) is quite poor. Cheers.
