Scientific Approach to Indie Game Marketing

IT’S NOT ABOUT YOU
A Scientific Approach to Effective Indie Game Marketing
© Indie Game Girl | Build Adoring Fanbases © Indie Game Girl | Build Adoring Fanbases w witihth M Maarkrkeetitningg | |w wwwww..iinnddiieeggaammeeggiirrl.lc.coomm

EMMY
JONASSEN
Founder, Indie Game Girl
@IndieGameGirl
emmy@indiegamegirl.com
www.indiegamegirl.com
Hi, I’m Emmy!
I help indie game developers
build adoring fanbases with
free marketing instruction.
© Indie Game Girl | Build Adoring Fanbases with Marketing | www.indiegamegirl.com

Good marketing is
NOT about you.

It’s about strangers
who you’re asking
for favors.

Important strangers like...
Potential Players The Press

Strangers need a
compelling reason
to grant favors.

Like…why
they will love
your game.

NOT why you think
they’ll love it.

But, being indie
conditions us to
focus on ourselves.

Why are you an indie developer?
“It is the only way I can make
the games I want to make
with artistic integrity and
independence. And I want to
own the IP I create.”
“…because I don’t have the
opportunity to work on
games I want to play with
any local games companies.”
“…I want to design games
and then make them,
without them being horribly
compromised.”
“…because no one writes
the games I want to play.”
- Source: Develop

How do you
shift focus onto
strangers?

…and ensure your
“compelling reason”
is the most compelling?

Apply science
to your
marketing.

MARKETING FORMULA
Who + Why = Result
Target Market(s) Compelling Reason
(communicated via marketing)
a.k.a., “Favors Granted”

CASE STUDY
Challenge
Expand Wii’s user base to
include more women,
specifically moms.
Solution
Focus on moms looking to lose
weight and generate interest via
influencers. Demonstrate Wii Fit
is fun, motivating and effective.
“How Will it Move You?”
by Goodby, Silverstein & Partners
Results
By the end of 2008, the Wii Fit
sold 4.5 million units in the U.S.

How to Apply Science to Marketing:
☐ Understand your game in its competitive context.
☐ Identify your target market(s).
☐ Understand your target’s needs with buyer personas.
☐ Create a positioning statement for each persona.
☐ Apply positioning statement to marketing materials.

How to Understand Your Game:
1. Identify your game’s platform(s)
2. Identify your game’s genre(s)
3. Identify your game’s competitors
- 10 to 15
- Include games not yet released
4. Know your competitors inside and out
- Examine competitor marketing materials
- Play competitor games (if available to play)
5. Analyze how you compare with a “Competitive Matrix”

COMPETITIVE MATRIX
Your Game Competitor 1 Competitor 2 Competitor 3 Competitor 4 …Competitor X
x x
x
Feature 1
Feature 2
Feature 3
Feature 4
Feature 5
Feature 6
Feature 7
Feature 8
Feature 9
…Feature X
x
x x x
x
x
x
x x x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x x x
x x x x
x
x x x

þ Understand your game in its competitive context.
☐ Identify your target market(s).

WHAT IS A TARGET MARKET?
A group of people who share similar
traits that make them most likely to grant
your favor.

How to Identify Target Market(s):
1. Use research to match your game’s genre to its target
market(s)
2. Find research by:
- Searching for free, online data (blogs, free reports)

EXAMPLE – FREE, ONLINE DATA
Android card/battle games’
target market is is men
between 20 to 30 years old.
- Android Gaming Matrix, Flurry

How to Identify Target Market(s):
1. Use research to match your game’s genre to its target
market(s)
2. Find research by:
- Searching for free, online data (blogs, free reports)
- Paying for reports
- Commissioning reports
- Conducting your own research (surveys, interviews)

Resources for Reliable Data:
1. Casual Connect (casualconnect.org/research-reports)
2. EEDAR (eedar.com)
3. Entertainment Software Association (theesa.com)
4. Flurry blog (flurry.com/blog/flurry-insights)
5. International Development Group (idgconsulting.com/store)
6. New Zoo (newzoo.com/free)
7. NPD Group (npd.com/wps/portal/npd/us/news/latest-reports/video-games)
8. PwC (pwc.com/gx/en/global-entertainment-media-outlook/segment-insights/video-games.jhtml)

þ Identify your target market(s).

TARGET MARKET EXAMPLE
Men between the ages of 20 to 30
years old.

Data a Target Market Doesn’t Provide:
1. What your target market is trying to accomplish
2. What goals drive their behavior
3. How they think
4. How they buy
5. Why they make buying decisions
6. Where they buy
7. When they buy
- Source: Tony Zambito

WHAT IS A BUYER PERSONA?
A research-based personification of your
target market, including: demographic,
behavioral and psychographic data.

BUYER PERSONA EXAMPLE
“Samantha enjoys the feeling of winning
against “Samantha her real-plays world mobile friends games and to goes pass
to
great time lengths and compete to maintain against her friends…”
dominance,
including: frequently purchasing coins.”
Demographic
Behavioral &
Psychographic
“Samantha primarily downloads games
that are recommended/currently played
by friends.”

How to Create Your Buyer Persona(s):
1. Dig deeper into your target market research data
- Demographic (i.e., who they are)
- Behavioral (i.e., gaming habits)
- Psychographic (i.e., why they game)
- Don’t forget forums and reviews!
2. Fill data gaps by interviewing people in your target market
- Create a list of questions
- Recruit interviewees
- Conduct interviews (at least 3-5)
3. Create a buyer persona for each target market
- Lots of great templates online

Good Questions to Ask in Interviews:
1. What games are you playing/have you played on [platform]?
2. How did you learn about these games?
3. Why did you decide to buy/try these games?
4. Why do you enjoy playing these games?
5. How many times per week and for how long do you play?
6. What days and at what time(s) during those days do you play?
7. Where do you play these games?
8. If you’ve spent money on these games, what was it for and how
often have you made similar purchases?
9. What is the average amount you’ve spent on such purchases?
10. What are your biggest frustrations with these games?

þ Identify your viable target market(s).
þ Understand your target’s needs with buyer personas.

WHAT IS A POSITIONIG STATEMENT?
An expression of how your game fills a
specific target market’s need in a way that
your competitors’ games do not.

STANDARD FORMAT
For [target market], [game] is the
[competitive advantage] among all [genre]
games because only [game] is [compelling
reason].

EXAMPLE
For mothers looking to lose weight, Wii Fit is
the most-endorsed exercise video game by
the world’s top mommy bloggers because
only the Wii Fit turns “the chore of working
out” into an interactive experience that’s fun
and proven to be effective.
- NOTE: positioning statement above is an example positioning
statement, NOT Nintendo’s actual positioning statement.

þ Identify your target market(s).
þ Understand your target’s needs with buyer personas.
þ Create a positioning statement for each persona.

How to Apply Positioning to Marketing:
1. Translate your positioning through your marketing
medium

EXAMPLE
How Wii Fit Applied Positioning:
1. Imagery: shows target market
(moms looking to lose weight)
having fun exercising, but also
looking fit.
2. Copy: headline reinforces the
game’s compelling reason: that it
motivates you to exercise.
- Wii Fit Print Ad, Goodby, Silverstein & Partners

How to Apply Positioning to Marketing:
1. Communicate your positioning through your marketing
medium
2. Determine what marketing materials are needed and
apply same positioning to each

WATCH MY KONSOLL 2013 PRESENTATION
1. Available on YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=SkEQtMP2CuA
2. …or, on my site
http://www.indiegamegirl.com/no-budget-
marketing
- Successful Indie Game Marketing, Emmy Jonassen

To Quickly Summarize:
1. Good marketing is NOT about you! It’s about strangers.
2. Strangers are not your mom—they need a compelling
reason to grant you your favor.
3. Ensure that compelling reason you’re communicating is
the right one by applying science.
4. Start with competitive research, identify your target market
via your game’s genre, dig deeper to understand your
target’s needs with buyer personas, craft your positioning,
then translate positioning to your marketing.
5. Launch a targeted and impactful campaign that kicks @$$!

Thank you.

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Scientific Approach to Indie Game Marketing

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