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Being a one-person army might be okay when you’re developing your indie game, but doing all the marketing by yourself is going to be hard. The solution? Making use of tools and resources that make the job easier for you.
Let’s explore 7 of the best tools to aid you in your indie game marketing journey.
1. Steam
Steam.
Steam (and Steam Charts) is a veritable treasure trove when it comes to doing market research for your game by understanding your target audience and competitors. You can search by genre or category to see what kinds of games are gaining traction, what players are saying about them, and what your competitors are doing. What’s more, you’ll also get access to raw data such as number of wishlists, average review scores, and game traffic, giving you a bird’s eye view of how the industry is faring.
2. Social media, forums, and communities
Imagine being in a room full of potential players and getting to gather insights from them about their gaming preferences. How valuable would that be? That’s exactly what having a presence on social media platforms and forums like TikTok, X, Reddit, Instagram, and Discord does! In addition to promoting your game, you get to network with real players, create a gaming community, and get feedback. As a bonus, you can also gauge your competitors’ paid ads and see what’s trending in the gaming world.
3. Crowdfunding platforms
Let’s be honest. Developing an indie game and marketing it needs the kind of money that most of us cannot shell out on our own. Enter: crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter and Indiegogo that can help you raise the funds you need so that you can give your game the dedication (and marketing) that it deserves!
For some inspo, read this case study about how Campaign Cooperative (that’s us 👋) helped Genfanad get its Kickstarter fully funded in just 24 hours.
4. Analytics platforms
Part of developing an indie game includes diving deep into gaming analytics and using the data to inform your development and marketing strategy. This includes knowing what players are searching for within games, how other games in your genre are performing, what keywords you need to target during your marketing campaigns, and what the average going price is for similar games. While collecting this data manually can be next to impossible, tools like Google Trends and VGInsights make it very easy!
5. Influencer analytics platforms
An effective game marketing includes influencer collaborations. But, you can’t just work with any influencer; you need to pick the ones that stream games within your genre that offer the right mix of popularity and affordability. Influencer analytics platforms like TwitchTracker and Playboard.co aid you in this by giving you the data you need about influencers’ engagement, hours streamed, average views per stream, and so on.
TwitchTracker.
6. Newsletter providers
Along with creating a social media presence, you must also start a newsletter so that you stay in direct contact with your target audience – even if you only send one email per month. Here are some email marketing strategies that you can use for ideas.
The best part about email marketing, though, is that you can divide your audience into segments and send personalized emails for each group instead of going for a one-size-fits-all approach! Newsletter providers like Mailchimp help you automate and streamline the whole process.
7. Indie game marketing agency
If you find your indie game marketing checklist to be too overwhelming, you can make use of this single tool that will give you an edge over your rivals: an indie game-exclusive marketing agency like Campaign Cooperative. Our team is filled with marketing experts who are gamers, so you can rest assured that your game will get to shine in the spotlight. And, hey, we offer a range of services from Steam page optimization to paid ads.