I took a look over my website and realized that I don’t really have any marketing content on here. This is my effort to correct that. Today, I want to write out everything I’ve seen work for indie game devs in marketing their game.
It’s not some hard, impossible thing to effectively market your indie game before, during, and after launch. You and I both know that a ton of game devs have just nailed it when it came to releasing their first game. But there were things that they did beforehand to lead up to a successful launch.
- Effectively market your game on social media.
- Ask content creators, gaming websites, journalists, etc to write about your game on their sites.
- Create a dedicated Discord server where players and fans can get news and information that leads to the final sale of your game.
I shouldn’t have to tell you this, but please check your grammar and punctuation. I have a whole other post about that you can check out.
Marketing Your Indie Game On Social Media
Effectively using social media to market your indie game isn’t magic. If you’re actively developing your game, social media can be your best friend. If you’re reading this and aren’t actively working on your game, forget social media. Trust me.
If you’re still here, these are things you can post on a DAILY basis. Yes, daily. You can schedule posts on Twitter/X and most other sites, so you don’t have to actually sit there and set a timer to remind yourself to post something.
Describe Your Game’s Features
Record gameplay features that are unique to your game and talk about them. It can quite literally be a ten-second video of an attack feature that looks cool with some text that says “Smash and burn. Stake your enemies and destroy all who oppose you. Check out demo the demo for X.” You get the idea. Since you’re already working on the game, recording something you think is cool can go a long way online.
You can also do this with in-game assets. Have a non-important NPC or a protagonist who looks cool? What about some interesting-looking in-game architecture? Share them and talk a little bit about what inspired you to make them. You don’t have to give the whole plot away, but players need to love the game as much as you do if you expect them to both wishlist AND buy it.
Posting Memes
This doesn’t work for every game, but it definitely works for more quirky and out-of-the-box ones. Put your characters in random, real-world scenarios and write an appropriate caption. Don’t overthink it.
Did you miss a big convention? Your characters didn’t! And they had a lot of fun without you.
Is there a popular game right now that your characters would be playing? Photoshop them into the game.
Related: Level Up Your Focus and Relaxation With This Tranquil Gamified Tool
The Power of Asking
A lot of video game news websites have the email addresses of everyone on their staff. This doesn’t mean that I’m encouraging you to write to every single person featured on every single website you find. Be specific, professional, and unique to everyone you contact. If you just copy and paste a template, it’ll feel disingenuous to some websites and they won’t bother to look deeper.
You’ll want to take a look at sites and writes who cover games like yours and email them. Write up something that goes over:
- Who you are / who your dev studio is.
- Remember to add your most important links. Trust me when I say that a journalist will not take the time to look you up while they have a pile of missed emails.
- A bit about your game with links that lead to the Steam page.
- You can also mention if there’s a demo or if you have an expected release date/window.
- Why you are writing to them and what your expectations are.
- Why you think they’ll love your game.
- I recommend mentioning a past article of theirs that’s similar to your game to emphasize on why you think they’d love yours.
- Thank them for their time.
- Link your press kit.
Don’t take it personally if they don’t respond or do respond telling you that they won’t do it. It happens and you move on.
Related: Navigating the Rodent Realm in A Rat’s Life: The Cat Conspiracy
Create and Post Frequently on Your Game’s Discord Server
A lot of games don’t do this because it seems like it’s not worth the effort. If your game is as fun, interesting, or whatever as you claim, then people will want to know about it more intimately.
Using the above social media methods, you can write a brief invitation to your Discord in each post. Better yet, save the space and have it linked in your bio if you’re using something like Threads or Twitter/X.
Make sure each channel is organized and each to maneuver through. When it comes to content, these are the people who want to genuinely know more about the game and its progress. You’ll want to post consistently for this to work, so buckle in.
- Talk about a new update you made to the demo.
- Go over a bug that you finally were able to fix.
- Share a hilarious bug that you encountered.
- Unveil new information that no one outside of the server has seen yet.
- Write up a dev diary.
You can use screenshots of the server to show off what people can expect and promote people going to it on sites like Twitter/X or Threads (with permission from those in the channel, of course).
The world is your oyster, but take care not to spam @everyone too often. People WILL leave the server.
Related: Conquering Chaos in Lucky Tower Ultimate – A Cartoonish Romp Through a Tower of Mayhem
Need Help Marketing Your Indie Game?
You don’t have to go it alone. If marketing your indie game is starting to become too much for you, then send us a message and fill out our checklist.
We offer a variety of services including,
- Editing the grammar and punctuation on your Steam page.
- Writing up your social media posts.
- Playtesting your game for grammatical errors.
- And more.
We specialize in helping indie games get the social media marketing and PR they deserve until they A. find a publisher or B. release their game. That’s our way of saying that you aren’t stuck with us when you don’t need our services anymore.
What are your thoughts?