Talk Title: The Marketing Money Talk: How to Budget Your Indie Game's Promotion Campaign

Effective talk: Budget the marketing for a game

Year of Talk: 2024

Video Link: The Marketing Money Talk: How to Budget Your Indie Game's Promotion Campaign

The areas that the talks cover is as follows: 3 budgeting rules for indies and a hierarchy of budgeting steps.

Budgeting rules:

1. Make a budget for the marketing but be willing to use the money in other areas of marketing. If something is bringing more people over compared to other options then it's worth spending more money on it.

2. Trying to do % of the total budget in markets can be used as guidelines, it's more important to create a budget on what you can/need to spend money on. If you know roughly how much money you need then you can use it. Trying to stick to a % might lead you to not having enough or too much money in marketing.

3. Even though most people believe that just having a lot of marketing makes a game successful. It misses the main picture as it normally just improves visibility. The main way it helps is by multiplying how many people see the game and are likely to get it. Being a good or bad game is the main factor in deciding how much the money used will help improve the numbers.

   
   

Budgeting hierarchy:

1. First-party support.

   1. It's important to make sure the main page(s) where the game is being sold is your first area. That is the main thing people will see when going to buy the game.

   2. Normally the sites where you sell the game and have a front page or various lists where people can easily find new games about to be released.

   3. Three main groups that can work for this option. The dev/studio, an agent (Can ask between 5-30% of sales/revenue), or a publisher (Can ask between 20-60%).

2. Store page:

   1. The store page is super important as it is where people physically buy the game. It is also where any possible player will read more about the game and whether it's something they would enjoy.

   2. It's important to have the best art possible/images on the page. It needs to show how the game feels and looks.

   3. Also should have a trailer to show more content of the game. It is one of the first things people will see when looking at a game.

   4. The cost for all of this can range between a few hundred dollars to a few thousand depending on the skills of the people you higher or how good the content is meant to be.

   5. It is recommended to have 1-3 trailers and at most 6. Any more and it can be hard to find things to talk about from the game.

   6. The description is another important factor as it's important to clearly communicate with people what the game is about. If it is too long or confusing then people won't understand what the game is meant to be/have.

   7. If you can localize the store page (Also the game if possible) to a few languages it can help reach a wider audiance that might enjoy the game.

3. Marketing plan:

   1. It is important to not miss any important deadlines to show your game in events or to release it in first-party apps/consoles.

   2. When you're planning your marketing it would be a great time to adjust to the budget from before.

4. Online Events:

   1. Attending online events allows a lot more opportunities to reach a large group of people. 

   2. It also means that there might be people watching the event who haven't had the opportunity to find the game but would still greatly enjoy it.

   3. Depending on how popular/good the game is beforehand it can get invited to attend for free.

5. Social media/community management:

   1. It might not always be possible to hire a community manager. As it can be very costly and not everyone has the budget for it.

   2. There are a lot of smaller jobs that are covered under community management.

      1. Content creation

      2. Community growth

      3. Customer support

      4. ETC

6. Influencer/Press outreach:

   1. Having a channel show off the game can help reach hundreds of thousands of people. All of which will have the opportunity to show the game to a wider audience.

   2. This can be done either by outreach to different influencers or by having them find the game organically through events like Steam Fest.

   3. Doing a similar outreach to news organizations will allow you to have news made on the game. Some likely people don't watch a lot of trailers or influencers but might find the article one day and get interested.

   4. Press will likely give out ratings of the game which can be posted online if they are relatively high.

7. Attending physical events:

   1. It can be super useful to attend events like GDC or PAX as it lets more people try out the game instead of just watching influencers or trailers.

   2. By going to the events there can be a lot of opportunities to meet the press and conduct interviews with them. Which can be useful for organic expansion.

8. Paid influencer coverage:

   1. By paying influencers it helps guarantee that they will play the game instead of hoping for it to happen.

   2. It also means that you can ask for specific video lengths or that certain talking points are mentioned.

   3. It is important to be careful to not overspend. Asking for more might mean that you need to pay extra money while not increasing the amount of new users.

9. Paid social media ads:

   1. It can be useful if there is extra money to spend on it.

   2. Something that can be hard to appropriately measure as there might be certain numbers that aren't clear.

   3. If a person on the team already has experience with understanding the numbers and how to optimize it then might be worth it. But it can take a lot of time to get it good enough that it helps.