How many times have you heard it? Yes, it’s true: marketing is essential and works all too well. But first, what are we talking about? Essentially, it’s about strategies and activities aimed at promoting a product, service, or brand, with the goal of creating value for customers and generating profit. The point I want to emphasize here is that marketing is the subject of entire university courses that cover a broad range of subjects—from the basics to buyer psychology and deep market data analysis.
Think of it like this: you don’t need to be a psychologist to listen to a friend, but you probably can’t help them through serious depression without specialized training. Just like most of us understand the concept of designing a building, but putting together the calculations to ensure it stands up is another story entirely.
Marketing, once again, is just a word, but it represents a whole world of knowledge. Expecting to do good marketing on your own is like believing you could walk into an operating room tomorrow to perform a tonsillectomy simply because it’s “just removing tonsils,” right? Enthusiasm is a wonderful thing, and practice and dedication can get you far, but there’s a limit beyond which you need a well-organized study plan to progress.
Doing marketing means planting the idea in a potential buyer’s mind that your product is for them. Already, this assumes some knowledge of human psychology—understanding how people decide whether to buy or not. Marketing also means knowing beforehand if a particular strategy will yield results. Sure, the web is full of articles on the topic, but it’s also true that you won’t become a doctor by reading medical articles.
Let’s be humble. You’ve probably received all kinds of advice on how to market your game, like opening a community or writing articles, but what’s essential is knowing how to do it. That’s the tricky part, which requires years of study, experience, and practice. Without illusions about the results, we can at least keep things in perspective.
The term “marketing” often oversimplifies a rich collection of techniques designed to bring a product to the public. Each technique has a specific target and works for certain products but not others. Knowing them all is an endeavor that requires a broad educational base, with options for further specialization.
This explains why most micro-indie developers struggle: limited visibility. In the end, marketing provides visibility, and the fact that smaller developers can’t easily achieve it indicates that, despite their best efforts, they’re not able to market effectively. But there’s still a solution: finding a publisher…