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Callum

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Everything posted by Callum

  1. Marapets has come back better than ever after suffering the devastating server crash back in February. A reddit topic that had significant popularity skyrocketed activity on the site and it’s definitely a place you would want to be right now! Whatever your age, the site has something to offer and I would really appreciate anybody signing up (or returning to an account you haven’t played in a while) using my referral link below: http://www.marapets.com thankyou! @Members
  2. Smartphone, ID Badge for school/work in case I get called in, wallet and my bank card. If I have my bag too then I always have a phone charger, wet wipes, aftershave and my laptop too but my bag is usually pretty heavy
  3. I am 17. I am male. I live in the south west of England I am a barista, and I also study Dance, Business and Psychology with the intention of becoming a Marketing Consultant in the future. I have no kids, but we have 3 snakes, two dogs, a cat and a tortoise ?
  4. @volka I am also loving the graphs there haha! I agree that it really is so dependent on the actual game itself and so many other features. If implemented well, then yes it's an awesome feature.
  5. I haven't tried competitions before but it's something I would definitely be inclined to do @Digital! if anyone knows of good ones coming up let me know please that would be awesome ?
  6. The Marapets' Referral System has returned and been revamped! This is an exciting News Update for all existing members, but especially so for those of us who were here when they crashed in the first place. The system is much more efficient now and rewards based on new member activity as opposed to just joining. Not a member? Why not use my referral link below and find out what the site's all about: www.marapets.com/refer.php?id=We
  7. Marketing Guide 1: Introduction to Marketing. What will these guides be about? Hey there and welcome to my little thread here on TGL. With the recent update of the Tutorials & Guides sector of the site, I figured it'd be quite nice to create a series of guides around effective marketing, advertising and branding of your game (although this isn't necessarily specific to games and could be applied to most businesses). I can't promise you that everything I suggest will work to your own specific needs, but hopefully it will provide some degree of insight and a little framework to help get the ball rolling in your head about how you want to go about marketing for your game. If you have any questions, queries or feel like shouting 'Oi that's a load of crap! Change it now please Sir' at me then you're absolutely free to comment below. So, what is Marketing? By literal definition, marketing is " the action or business of promoting and selling products or services, including market research and advertising.". It is very hard to write a more specific definition than that there due to how relative marketing can be to what product or service is being offered, what the intentions of the marketing are and what approach is taken to doing so. I would personally describe marketing to be the method by which a business takes to increase their market share, promote their product/service and to also grow and develop their brand identity. In plain, simple English: how you grow your business for the better. I see, so Marketing is the same as Advertising... right? Nope. Marketing is more of the umbrella term under which advertising would fall. Advertising is perhaps one of the largest parts in making up marketing for businesses, however the term marketing also covers aspects such as brand identity, brand development and also product/service development (and loads of other specific stuff too!). It isn't as simple as trying to show off what your business offers to as many people as possible, and that is ultimately where a lot of new businesses struggle to market in the most effective way they can. Brand Identity? What on earth is that?! To successfully market, you should be establishing a brand for your product/service. Your brand should be somewhat iconic, and something that is unique to what you are offering; you need for it to be clear to your target audience that when they see something related to your brand, they can associate it with certain characteristics and be sure to recognise it. You do this with things as simple as Logos, or perhaps Slogans too but also with building up a voice and relationship with your audience. A few examples, if I may? Throughout this Guide so far I have been relatively chatty and not very formal, and hopefully seeming friendly and approachable to you guys. I am offering you a service, and in return my aim is to get feedback. In order to do so, I want to encourage my audience (Game/Business Owners & Marketing Co-ordinators) to be interactive with me. Throw in some mild humour, a little slang and avoid proper English too much and it's more like having a conversation than me ruling off a list of instructions. This is effectively what would be my brand voice. You wouldn't see a campaign for Chanel or Prada do something similar, because they are marketing to a different client and are aiming to achieve different goals. Alternatively, the British Government use a similar tactic for their DVLA radio/television ad campaigns by having the spokesperson have an informal conversation with the listener. This works because the majority of the audience they are targeting are much less likely to respond to something more formal. Make sense or have I rambled too much? What should I avoid when forging a brand? Consistancy is vital: it is contradictory and ineffective to chop and change between different brand identities and voices. It is confusing, less significant to your actual product/service and conveys a lack of clear vision of goals which can break the trust of an audience to your brand. You want for people to feel secure in knowing that your brand is offering something worthwhile, and if they cant even manage to be consistant with their voice or logo, what does that say about other aspects of the business? Heinz have almost the holy-grail of marketing with the all-time classic 'Beanz Meanz Heinz' slogan, and after many many years this is still the root of their marketing. 'It has to be Heinz', afterall. With a game, having a clarity of audience is very useful to start your marketing. If your 18+ RPG gore game is being advertised with a Chibi-Style Cutesy logo and a slogan of 'Come make new friends for life here!' then you're not really capturing the interests of your audience at all. On the flipside, if Moshi Monsters had a vector, single toned logo and a slogan of 'A fictional creature virtual pet site for you and your acquainances.' then the likelihood of children rushing to ask permission to sign up is pretty slim. This stuff is actually more common sense than anything too complicated. What is the Marketing Mix? The Marketing Mix is a series of factors which a business can manipulate in order to control their market share, sales of products or exposure to their desired audience. There are four main factors to consider here. 1. Product How is your game presented to the market? Is your UI concise and simple, or is it cluttered and inaccessible without a few hours of playing around to see what's what? Are your ad campaigns caputring the interests of your target audience? Is your game reliable and bug free, with a reputation for being so? Does your game already have an active userbase or is already popular? Use these factors to your advantage and promote the positives within your marketing. What exactly is the unique selling point of your game? Why should I buy this or sign up as apposed to other similar games? 2. Price Is your game free? If so, is it cluttered with ads to the point of inconveniencing the user? Is it priced competitively with other similar games? Is it something people can justify spending this amount of money on for the amount of hours they would get from it? Look at Game of War: Fire Age for example: they have in-app purchases which increase in price the more you buy. I personally am at a point now where I need to try and justify spending £79.99 on an upgrade which cost me £3.99 once... 3. Promotion How are people going to know about your product? Where are your ad campaigns most likely to be placed with the most effect? For example, hiring a billboard in Japan to market a british county farmer's market is going to be totally ineffective. Alternatively, is it really worth paying for social media ad-streams is you're targeting your game at children aged 7 or younger? You really want to make sure you are promoting your product in both the most cost-effective and exposure-effective way you can. This may require an amount of trial and error, and a lot or market research, but is vital for success in marketing without blowing huge budgets on poorly driven campaigns. 4. Place How are you products available to customers? Downloadable only from a dodgy 3rd party site online of which all virus protection softwares are going crazy at? In a game store on the highstreet? From the Google Play AND IOS Store, or just one/the other? Place also refers to the time in which you release the game - no point releasing a Reindeer Racing mobile game in time for Easter, however releasing on the run up to Christmas would prove much more effective. You know the launch of something huge such as Pokemon GO! is upcoming? Release yours around this to avoid being lost in the hype no doubtebly going to come from the competition's launch. An example of this could be how TGL was opened just as VPL crashed (coincidence, I assure you) however the timing is brilliant because it provides an alternative for an already eager audience when their preffered product/service isn't available, hence increasing TGL's market share somewhat. Target Audience? Market Share? WHAT DO YOU MEAN!? Target Audience is who you want to market your game for, and who is most likely to want to play your game. Market Share is simply how much of a percentage of the exisiting market does your game hold to the competition. For example, Pepsi and Coca-Cola may hold a 45%:50% share of the market for people purchasing cola, and then smaller companies sharing the remaining 5%. A summer ad campaign for Pepsi brings it up to 47% and Coco-Cola down to 49%, leaving the competition with just 4% now. Make sense? I will be going over how to increase market share by market penetration, creating a new market and other methods in a later guide. I will also develop a lot more on the Marketing Mix and how it can be used when marketing for your own game. I hope what I have written is beneficial somewhat and as concise as possible. Feedback is much appreciated! View full guide
  8. @Nate Possibly slightly belated here aha, but just don't stress too much about completing the main questline first. Go off and do the Guild Questlines as they are pretty exciting (the companions is definitely an improvement from the tedium of the fighter's guild we saw in Oblivion) and then the Civil War line is pretty decent the first time around. It doesnt really matter all that much which side you choose to fight for, however siding with Stormcloaks means that you get Tulius' awesome armour when you kill him at the end. Definitely definitely buy the Dawnguard and Hearthfire expansions as the houses are awesome, and the Dawnguard Questline is probably the most exciting one in the game. Becoming a Vampire Lord has some pretty decent benefits too - especially if you're slaying 100s of soliders in a fortress
  9. @kami I'll be doing some googling tonight in that case then haha! Thanks.
  10. My main issue is that the site caps it's members so regularly. I've tried to sign up a couple of times and it's not let me and for that reason now I have no interest in signing up in the future. I don't get why a site that successful hasn't invested more into handling higher user counts... Maybe there is a reason but who knows? (If you do know tell me! )
  11. @digital I know art contests on VPL were usually pretty unsuccessful, mostly due to artists being too busy with their own commissions and real life. I'm not sure if a descriptive writing contest would be the same, or if it would be more popular as it's somewhat more open to people. I know I'd always enter writing competitions personally. How well has the posting contest gone so far? I don't know if it would either encourage spam or encourage valuable contributions but if it's worked so far maybe do that as a monthly thing? Also, how easy would it be to set up referral IDs and we could do a referral contest. Points based, one point for a sign up and 3 points for when they reach 10 posts or something.
  12. Agreed with everyone else here that's the button i always use!
  13. @kamiUnfortunately I've been at work all day so have missed them all, but oh dear I do love April Fools!
  14. A creative writing degree sounds like so much fun!
  15. Price dependent, perhaps! @Regnant how much are you looking for? Private message me if you wanna discuss this
  16. I need to learn PHP... damn! Good tutorial! @PaulSonny
  17. Welcome aboard @Kitty - I'm Callum nice of you to wonder in here. If you've got any questions just shoot me a mail any time and I'll get back to you
  18. Hey guys, Wanting to build a portfolio for my writing so looking for voluntary positions to write lore, item descriptions, NPC or world descriptions or just about any form of writing you may need. I will work for free until further notice, however I don't currently have any examples so if you don't like what I do, then don't use it and I won't be offended. Let me know if you've got anything! Callum
  19. Oh I wonder if I could get the Writer title... Maybe I'll start a post in the market!
  20. I work full time as a Barista until I decide exactly what it is I want to do with life haha. I love my job though and all the pepole, so I will probably forever stay at least part time as a Barista. I am probably going to join Babcock under their Business Apprenticeship in September, which can open up a lot of opportunities in the world of business whilst gaining vocational qualifications at the same time. I regret leaving A-Levels but I'm going to look into other routes to university and hopefully one day will either study Business and Marketing or something IT Based for a degree.
  21. Yiu are incredibly talented as an artist and I've written your name down in the event I should ever need an artist in the future! Best of luck.
  22. This is such a cool little feature! Sites should definitely consider getting this in time for Christmas!
  23. @Digital Haha well it is 1am - what would you recommend changing formatting wise?
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