Callum

Wow we are growing well! Cant wait for more people to come and join us too, I expect that post count to skyrocket soon enough.

@Digital What do you think?

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!

@Hare Is also lovely to have conversations with on the forums and I personally think that goes a long way.

@digital hmm that might actually be quite a cool asset to have for the forums!

And my lord it drains your battery like anything - probably even worse so than Pokemon Go! It will use a full charge of my phone within two hours quite easily.

Guilty for also binge watching Legend of the Seeker, Gossip Girl and Vampire Diaries. Not that we are allowed ever to speak of the latter again. .. haha

I quite liked the storyline from Shivering Isles in Oblivion. It was a little dragged out towards the end but just being in the realm of madness was so much fun and sheograth is just so twisted! That being said the Dawn guard stor line from Skyrim as well as the Thieves Guild were a lot of fun too. @Digital

I am a massive spyro fan even back to when it was on the original playstation! This is just too cool...

As said earlier I have gotten back into Game of War I don't know what compels me to play and spend money on that blasted game when I don't ever fight and am constantly shielded anyway haha! @Digital

The upgrade packs are actually really good like you get some awesome amounts of speedups, resources and unique perks you couldn't otherwise achieve but they become very overpriced a little too quickly in my opinion. It's hard to explain without knowing the game @SingSong

@Digital @HareOh dear i just reread the first post and now realise that it's a TGL adoptable haha!

Wow this is truly incredible that is a lot of money! Good cause as well Red Nose Day is definitely huge here in the UK - didn't know they were branching to America too mind you ?

Until recently, I never really spend money on games for mobile however then I started playing Game of War: Fire Edition... my poor bank account. The upgrade packs increase starting at £3.99, £9.99, £29.99 and then £79.99. Well within a few hours I bought all the packs excluding the 79.99 one but on payday I will probably get a couple. So I've spent over £40 on a mobile app game which is likely to triple by the end of the week. Anyone else do this or similar?

I haven't written any descriptions for sites but it's something I'd love to do! Quite enjoyed writing whilst I was at school and I'm pretty good with descriptive writing. @Digital That lizard image is quite a cool one do you have the original image too?

Are we including sites such as Moshi Monsters here? @Digital

@kami and profits from the game would go where exactly? If someone owned the game by such it would no longer be considered open source, right? It would have to be a public thing... hence who is funding the payment for artists and programmers. If someone was to pay them surely it's only fair they then own the game and then it just becomes a normal development using a huge team of people instead. Alternatively I guess it could be not for profit and crowdfunded with the general manager holding a business account for the game I guess. Sorry for thinking aloud haha!

Emailed you @PaulSonny!

From someone who knows nothing of PHP that makes relative sense and I can understand why it's simpler than resetting at new thresholds. I guess alternatively it would reset and the threshold would increase and the original level would be disbanded at the point of reaching the next threshold?

Now I am not very experienced and may be making incorrect assumptions so do correct me if doing so here. But how would you feel about contributing to the development of an online open source game? I mean with art or programming mostly. Would it work or would styles clash too much? Each area would have a general manager and an overall manager to oversee the development meaning all contributions would need to be tested and approved before being implemented. The actual owner would be responsible for paying costs etc. but obviously not to artists and programmers. Would there not be a big enough incentive to help or what? Just floating an idea.

Mine is when people can't clean up after themselves in work or think it's someone else's job to do so. If you spill milk, mop it up! If chocolate powider explodes everywhere get a blooming hoover out!!! @everycostabarista

I'd like to initially learn PHP and then go down the Python route I think but all requires a lot more time and research (time is what I am lacking at this stage haha).

@Hare said exactly what I thought when reading the original post. The third option by far will be most beneficial.

Advertising campaigning is fundamental to our growth now that we already have a small active community and is something both I and @Digital are working on as we speak. I am also going to look into contacting game owners of a variety of games as well as blog owners to see about promoting us somewhat or at least offering us content. As for VPL, it has had a massive hit in terms of reputation of which I highly doubt it's going to come back from and as much as that's a shame, the second it's live again we will be snapping their members up in a heartbeat. I feel somewhat bad as working for that site too, but it is so incredibly poorly managed it never will stand a chance when direct competition is significantly more stable and generically advanced. *cough* TGL *cough* The best thing you as members can do at this stage is dragging all your friends down here! Members of games you know or real life people it doesn't matter - snowballing is an awesome way for small businesses' to grow.