Zero budget game marketing Part 1

Hi everyone,

this time i got a special blogpost for you ;)

I watched a video at the unity 3d tutorial site about how to market your game without any money and the importance of marketing in general. You can view the slides of the presentation here.


This video is really helpful and interesting. So check out the video and the other sites of Emmy Jonassen.
If you dont have the time to do that read my summary of it here.
The summary will be divided into three parts to keep the posts short and focused on one topic.
 This time i will tell you about the beginning of the presentation and the 1. step to achieve marketing sucess, namely  "Create irresistible promotional materials" .

First of all Emmy talked about how hard it is to become an indie developer and that most games(80%) are developed at a loss(in terms of money).
After that she showed how games made a lot more profit by investing some time, not money, into marketing which boosted their sales a lot.

The next part of her presentation was named "3 Steps to Achieve Marketing Sucess":
Each of those parts had a few subheadlines which i am going to tell you about right now.

The five must have parts of your promotional materials are:

-Trailer video(ingame footage, grab the viewers attention right in the intro, not longer than 90 seconds, give an outlook on further updates, use music/sounds effects and include reviews if possible)
- Screenshots(show them the diversity of your game and the most breathtaking scenes, use a high resolution and a well lit scene)
- press release(start with the important info and grab the readers attention at the beginning of your article, use quotes, give readers your contact info or links to pages where they can find out more about you, add screenshots and a trailer video to your article, use hyperlinks within the text so people can easily reach your own sites)
-landing page(no navigation, grabbing headline, social sharing icons, strong call to action(buy/download) button, captivating screenshots, reviews and contact information)
- development blog(if you work on your game 8hours a day 5days a week blog at least once weekly, use images, add a link to and from your homepage, offer all kind of possibilities for readers to share and follow your posts)

Thats it for the first part.

Next time i will tell you about the step "Score articles in top-tier publications".

So look forward to it and see you next time.

Best wishes

Feliza