u/Buff_me_plz

When you think development is hard, marketing is gonna be the final boss, and many times harder than everything that came before. The experience varies depending on different factors like how appealing a game looks, how-well made the marketing content is and also luck.

Over the last couple of months I have invested about 300 hours into marketing my game. I've posted on different social media platforms, including Instagram, TikTok, X and YouTube.

The only platform that remotely worked was YouTube Shorts, where videos averaged between 2,000 and 3,000 views, while posts on other platforms were below 1,000 views.

I think the quality of my posts improved over time, and I've learned a lot about the process of generating content somewhat efficiently, which might come in handy later. I've tried sharing actual gameplay of my game, or narrated updates when I implemented new content. I even tried finding trending content and essentially copying what worked for others, because I thought: if it worked for them, it might work for me. Frankly, the ROI in terms of time invested versus wishlists was very bad so far.

The most important tip I can give in this section is: have a clear and easy-to-understand hook. When I started releasing my first content and trailer, I was missing a clear hook. I just didn’t realize it yet. I think this ended up being one of my biggest unnecessary time sinks. Communicating your hook efficiently is probably one of the most important things you have to do. What is the core idea of your game? What makes it unique? Why should someone care within the first few seconds?

And always frontload your hook, especially in short-form content. Just observe yourself when scrolling through social media. How much time do you give a post before deciding whether to keep watching? If you're anything like me: Probably almost none. Put the most interesting thing right at the beginning, or you’ll lose viewers immediately.

A lot of my time investment in marketing also went into creating the trailer, which turned out to be infinitely harder than I anticipated. I'm currently at version 3 of it, but I now have a clear vision of what to change to hopefully get the final version done in the next iteration. I was and still am considering hiring a professional editor to create the trailer. I think it’s one of the most valuable marketing assets a game can have, which makes it a worthwhile investment.

Another takeaway I want to highlight is that, contrary to the general advice of getting your Steam page up as soon as possible, I wish I wouldn't have done it that way. I tried to get it up as soon as I had a core gameplay loop, some screenshots, and a (terrible) trailer. I didn't even really have any capsule art yet.

Since the release of the store page, I have overhauled all the visuals about 4 to 5 times. The thing I noticed is that Steam gives you an initial push, or algorithmic test, which seems to last about 1 or 2 months, during which you automatically get more impressions. If the algorithm doesn't pick you up during that time, it may give you less visibility afterward, which I think happened in my case, where I now fully rely on external marketing.

Now to the small * in my title. I basically marketed without a budget. The only thing I ever tried was investing 30€ into YouTube ads and 5€ into TikTok ads for my trailer.
Although ads will give you views, the quality of those views is very low. TikTok gave me about 800 views and YouTube about 5,000 views. I can't say for sure how the system works, but it seems like the content gets shown to people who engage very easily without having any real interest. Sometimes it almost felt like the system was (unintentionally?) showing the content to bots.

The 5,000 YouTube views had extremely low retention, but still resulted in about 400 subscribers, which doesn't really add up to me. I think it also resulted in close to 0 wishlists.

I would say ads (at this scale) are not worth it.

The thing I would definitely recommend is reaching out to content creators and press websites, as I see them as the most efficient way to get attention. I've reached out to IGN, which hasn't posted my trailer yet, but I would argue that's fair because my trailer still isn't good enough yet. I will try again in the future.

I've also reached out to some Japanese gaming websites, which actually wrote articles about my game and created posts on X. It wasn't a huge success in terms of wishlists, but I can now use it as a marketing tool: 'as featured by gamebiz.jp'.

I usually send a google drive folder containing my trailer, my press kit and the Steam store page when contacting outlets. For the press kit I used Press Kitty. It's free and easy to use, you can basically copy all the contents from your Steam page to the press kit and add additional stuff yourself. I then translated the press kit to Japanese as well. Everything is easy to set up and maintain.

One of the biggest benefits of investing so much time into marketing was learning how to pitch my game more effectively and how to develop it in a way that emphasizes its hook. I’ve definitely had moments of doubt along the way, but I’m optimistic that the game has a real chance.

Current situation and outlook
My game is currently sitting at about 100 wishlists, which I'm very grateful for. But I will still reduce the amount of time I invest into marketing the game on my own channels. I will fully focus my resources on developing a demo (it's close to being done) and creating the final version of the trailer.

With the demo, I will try to participate in Steam festivals, especially Steam Next Fest in October. I will also do two outreach campaigns. Once the demo is done, I will reach out to a list of content creators and try to get some coverage for the game. Once I have the trailer_finalfinalfinal, I will try to get more press coverage.

I have already started creating a list of US, European, and Asian media websites that I will contact with the final press kit. If anything, I would recommend directing most of your resources in that direction as well.

I hope this helps someone.

Keep grinding. This is the way.