In the final installment of the Build Your Game Marketing Plan series, we’re going to discuss how to create, forecast and refine your marketing campaigns. If you haven’t answered the questions from the previous parts of the series, make sure to complete these before moving on to this next step. We’ll be using that information!
Sections of the Game Marketing Plan
- Game Summary
- Environment
- Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats
- Goals and Objectives
- Marketing Strategy
- Action Program
- Forecast
- Refinement
Retention, engagement, and monetization are three important aspects when it comes to your game. A/B testing is one way to find out which aspects are going to work for your game forecast. Take a look at the GDC Vault – A/B Testing for Game Design Iteration: A Bayesian Approach.
Refinement is going to consist of keeping your community engaged. The article compares the differences between social media and community management. For example, social media involves short-term gains — whereas community management provides long-term retention.
“It is difficult to quantify directly the monetary value of community management — and it’s not right to do so. What you are looking to do is increase engagement. Engaged and happy players are more likely to not only become further involved in the community but to also reach out to new players. They become brand advocates.”
Don’t forget to start early with building your fan base. Building brand advocates is important for feedback from your most active players. Listening to your players is not only done through forum posts or rating systems, it’s what they do in the game that is also important. Implementing tracking software will help you with metrics that will help determining what is working and what is not. This will allow you to forecast and refine your strategies used in the game. Planning ahead is important as your players age.
Thanks for keeping up with my series! I hope that these tips have been useful in launching your next video game.
-Drew