A Super Actionable 10-Step Guide On How To Market Your Indie Game

Marketing can be tough, but all you need to get started is the following plan:

1. Create a crystal clear map of where you want your game to be.

2. Prioritize your marketing options. Stop focusing on what isn’t effective.

3. Spend the majority of your time on the strategies that do work.

4. Make data-driven decisions with that data that you’ve collected.

I’ve taken the time to outline the 10 steps below, with an example of how you might go about tackling each step.

Hope you’ll find this helpful!

1. Set a three-month goal of where you want to be with your marketing. Be as clear as possible in your metrics, and set numerical goals and values.

Example: “By the end of 3 months, I will have 3,000 people following my game on Twitter.”

2. Have an extremely clear vision of what your ideal player looks like, and the specific problem that you’re solving for them in terms of your game.

Example: “My game is a roguelike game similar to Binding of Isaac. My ideal player is a person who would enjoy that type of game.”

3. Create a list of 10 clear strategies that will help you in achieving your specific goal, and use estimations for each of the possible options.

Example: “First, I’d like to connect with more people on Twitter by following people who seem like they would be interested in that type of genre. Second, I’d like to create a Facebook page for my game and start getting likes on it via paid ads.” Third, I’d like to build my mailing list by creating a website for my game and sending that out to my friends.

4. Sort your list of marketing strategies by largest impact towards your goal.

Example: “I personally love Twitter, so that’s going to be the first item on my list. I also love Facebook as well, so that’ll be next. Mailing lists are pretty nice, but not a priority for me at the moment, so that’ll be third.”

A. Twitter

B. Facebook

C. Mailing list

D. Fourth Item Goes Here

E. Fifth Item Goes Here

5. Do the first item on your list for 7 days.

Example: “For the first week, I’ll be connecting with people on Twitter.”

6. Track every day how effective the activity performed towards your goal.

Example: “Seems like I got 50 followers today. This is 5 more followers than I got yesterday. Sweet!”

7. On the second week, spend 80% of your time doing the next item on the list, and 20% doing the previous week’s activity for another week.

Example: “I’ve been dedicating 1 hour every day towards marketing, so I’ll mostly focus on getting more Facebook likes this week via paid ads. I’ll also spend a tiny bit of time on Twitter, but mostly focusing on Facebook this week.

8. At the end of two weeks, evaluate which one of the options got your more traction towards your 3-month goal.

Example: “Looks like Facebook ads was a horrible waste of time. I’ve been spending way too much money for very little engagement compared to Twitter.”

9. Spend 80% of your time on the activity that was the most effective. Spend 20% of your time on the third item on your marketing strategy list. Stop doing whichever of the first two activities that weren’t as effective.

Example: “I’ll continue to be active on Twitter, and start working on building my website and mailing list.”

10. Repeat this process for three months.

Example: “This marketing stuff sure can be tedious and confusing sometimes, but I’m committed to trying my best and staying consistent.”

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