A Marketing Plan

So, today I've spent my day browsing the internet.

I know what you're thinking: what a waste! But no, I assure you, I was doing work.

I was looking up how to do marketing. I don't know why exactly, but it occurred to me yesterday that I needed to start marketing, and marketing hard. So I went to The Pixel Prospector for their list of indie marketing tips.

It's a very good list, and I just clicked randomly on a couple of articles that seemed relevant to my interest. I read some stuff, I watched some stuff... I learned some stuff.

So here, now, I'm going to make a marketing plan. For Recess Race! It's going to be boring and pictures-less because I'm boring and lack pictures.

Step 1
This blog!

You're already reading step one! This is what I did yesterday when I realised I needed to start marketing, and I also realised that it won't be enough. That brings me to step 2...

Step 2
Landing page for Recess Race
This is going to be a little more complicated because I lack pictures. But the idea is that once I have those pictures, I can use some web app to make a nice looking page super easily. That will allow people who are interested in my game but don't want to read my ramblings a place to go look at those pretty pictures and see if there's a release date yet.

Step 3
Twitter!
This should probably have been step 2, but it's written and I'm lazy so I won't change it. Twitter is wonderful. If you don't think it is then you've never used Twitter (or it's just not for you and that's fine!). It's a medium where you connect with people immediately and first-hand about your stuff, or their stuff. You can show them things, try their things, comment, suggest, riposte... it's an interesting environment unlike any other social medium (imho). In fact, when I'm done doing this, I'm going to make a Deranged Hermit twitter page and tentative logo, and add a bunch of cool people.

Step 4
Announce the Game Officially
Announcing a game is important. It may seem obvious at first, but it's not necessarily. As far as PR goes for indie games, there seem to be 2 camps of thought: one that says you should publicise hugely when the game is released, because the people can buy your game then and there and they [hopefully] will. The second camp says, "Bullshit! Tell everyone everything about your game always, so that people are perpetually talking about it!" This last seems more sensible to me, and that's what I'm going to do. So, I'm going to send the announcement to a list of...

Step 5
Make a press list!
Another step that probably should have come before the preceding one - and yet here we are. The press are - you guessed it - a key part of the PR process. If a game is on Penny-Arcade Report or Kotaku, I will likely hear about it. I don't frequent a lot of other game news sites, but that doesn't matter because I don't know a lot of people who follow more than a few game news sites (it becomes overbearing). If I start a conversation with a lot of game news people (persons!) then they are more likely to review/cover my game when it is out.

Step 6
Be present on forums, blogs & Reddit
Forums are an important place to focus my attention. Forums like TIG(TheIndieGame)Source are concentrated gatherings of geeks who have a higher chance to be interested in my game. If 4% of my Facebook friends will actually play my game, maybe 25% to 40% of TIGsource forum members will (these are all completely made up).

Reddit is weird but if you can get a hot conversation going there it can do wonders for your visibility.

This is Friday, which will hereafter be my be-on-the-everythingverse day. Follower Friday and the like!

Step 7
Be consistent
This may be a challenge for me. I have a habit of starting some sort of a campaign or a plan like this and never following through because I lost hope or whatever. That's obviously ridiculous and I should keep going no matter what happens or goes wrong or anything. This is the most important thing. Don't stop... belieeeving!

I will blog at least once a week (or as I have interesting stuff I want to share), and keep up with the other rules I'm setting myself.

Step 8
Make a big announcement every month
This might be tricky, but when I pull it off, it will be very effective. This is the first of November, so I'll say that on the first of every month, I'll make some sort of dramatic announcement. This will encourage me to keep going and get shit done. In the public eye, I must not waver!


So that's it for now. I think that's a pretty good start. I have stuff to do today, right now: make Twitter, follow some people, visit some forums... by next week I'll have something to show for it!

Thanks for reading everybody.

Stay prominent, public figure.

-mysteriosum (the deranged hermit)