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Another entry to our series demystifying the work of video game marketing agencies, today we’re discussing what game marketing agencies actually do. Which is a very valid question.
The short answer to this question is: it depends. Every video game marketing agency will have its own way of doing things, its own service offerings, and its own way of bringing its clients the results that they need.
The long answer is likely more helpful, and it’s what we’ll be discussing in this article: the basic structure of deliverables that most indie game marketing agencies follow. The phases that they break their own down into, how they execute that work, and, most importantly, why - in certain situations - it can be beneficial to hire a video game marketing agency, rather than undertaking the work yourself.
Coming Up With a Video Game Marketing Strategy
The first thing that a reputable video game marketing agency will do - and, arguably, one of the most valuable services that gaming marketing agencies offer - is to come up with a game marketing strategy. At Campaign Cooperative, we offer a minimised form of this for free, in the form of one of our proposals. Game marketing agencies have the benefit of having worked on hundreds of Steam page announcements, game launches, Next Fests, and all of the other beats that video game marketing entails. They’ve been around the block a few times, and they know what tends to work, and they know what doesn’t.
Crucially, for data-driven marketing agencies, this wealth of experience also means a wealth of data, in the form of benchmarks. Data-driven video game marketing agencies are able to compare the data from your game with the data from dozens of other games in the same genre: they can tell you what aspects of your game’s marketing are, or aren’t performing well, and focus their efforts on those specific avenues in order to create a highly effective campaign.
The truth is: the critical parts of video game marketing, particularly for indies, happens before launch, before your Steam Next Fest, and before your demo release. It happens in the ideation, pre-production and vertical slice phase: namely, finding a great genre, a great hook, and the aspects of your game that resonate with players. Gaming marketing agencies have the wealth of experience and data necessary to make that process as painless as possible.
Gaining Visibility, Wishlists, and Sales
Next, we move into the ‘meat’ of the offerings by video game marketing agencies: the part that appears in marketing copy, Reddit posts, and website service offerings. This is the ‘active’ phase of indie game marketing, where the name of the game is visibility, sales, and wishlists on Steam.
The approach to this varies from agency to agency. Some specialise in PR, some specialise in influencer marketing, and some on social media (a service that we, here at Campaign Cooperative, don’t offer at all, as, in our experience, it doesn’t provide value for the developers that we work with). If you work with a holistic agency - once that tries a bit of everything, and hones in on what works - this phase will likely incorporate some mix of the following:
- Organic Influencer Work
- Paid Influencer Sponsorship
- Press & PR
- Guerrilla Social Media (Reddit & Discord)
- Paid Advertising
Each section of which has a myriad of sub-categories and avenues to explore.
Why Hire a Video Game Marketing Agency? (Or, I Can Do That Myself, Right?)
We’ve talked before about how hiring a gaming marketing agency isn’t right for every developer. That continues to be true: for some games, for a lot of indie games, even, hiring a marketing agency isn’t the right thing for them, their studio, or their game.
If you’re a commercial developer, though, you’re looking to hit certain milestones in terms of wishlists on Steam. 7,000 at the lowest, but ideally, 15,000 or 30,000, minimum. This kind of wishlist gain takes a concerted strategy, time, and a significant amount of specialist skill. Not only in creating the ads, or writing the guerrilla marketing copy; but in harnessing decades-old connections and contacts with journalists and influencers.
Game devs - particularly indie game devs - are resourceful, quick to learn, and exceptionally hard-working - it takes a substantial amount of endurance to push an indie game to the finish line - but, the amount of time it takes to learn the ins-and-out of video game marketing, establish the connections, and finally do all of the work, is enormous. And, with so much on the line, for some games, it’s best to outsource marketing to professionals who have been in the industry for decades, and worked with hundreds of games.
Hopefully our look into what a video game marketing agency actually does has been helpful! We’ll be continuing this deep-dive into agency life over the coming weeks.