Creating a marketing plan that works for your game

You’ve been working on your game for years. It’s come from a little idea into your head into a full-fledged development and you're ready to get it out into the world. You know it’s good. People have told you it’s great. It should sell itself… right? Right?!

Unfortunately, the days of “good games sell well no matter what” have long passed. With over 18,000 games that released on Steam alone in 2024 - which is already double the amount released just a few years ago in 2019 - it is increasingly more difficult with every release to stand out amongst the crowd.

On top of that, there are a million options on what you can do to actually get your game into the hands of the right audience: influencer marketing, press outreach, social media management, event participation, SEO, and more. And with the social media lanscape changing every day, it’s understandable that games marketing might feel a bit overwhelming when you start.

I know first hand how hard it can be for small teams to wrap their head around the best strategies for marketing, especially with competing stresses on your time with game development.

So what do you need to create an effective marketing strategy for launch? What should you focus on and how do you implement it on time for the big day? And why the hell is it even important anyways?

Here are our tips, based on years of experience running effective launch campaigns for games across indie and AA studios, and how to get it ready for your game’s journey to market:

Develop your key audience and messaging

When designing your marketing strategy, the first and most important question is to ask who will actually want to play your game. No game is for everyone, and even if your game does have a wide audience appeal, it’s impossible to market to every single player out there.

So you’ll want to boil down your target to two to three main personas (more on how to do that in a later blog post, promise). Once you’ve picked these main personas, outline exactly what each of them will appreciate most about your game, what they are typically frustrated by in games, where you’ll find them (social media, events, etc.), and what kind of content or messaging they’ll appreciate. This will help immensely when you move on to planning content for social media and framing your game on store pages.

Set clear goals from the start

Similar to how you can’t market to every player, you also can’t expect to do everything. Setting clear goals for your marketing initiative is a great way to focus your marketing efforts in key areas.

This will look both quantitative and qualitative. Your quantitative goals can be things like wishlist increases, social media followers, Kickstarter supporters, or active Discord members. Your qualitative goals should be more about how you're positioning your game. Maybe you want to create a sense that your game is a fast-paced adventure, but that still has appeal to casual gamers. Set a few key messages or USPs (unique selling points) as priorities for your marketing initiatives to keep communication consistent and effective.

Create a timeline and start early

The key to any successful marketing campaign is having clear milestones and ensuring you’re meeting them on time. For games marketing, you’re going to want to start earlier than you think you need to. Don’t wait for a completed final build before you start thinking about how to market it, a good campaign starts much earlier than that.

Before launch, you’ll want to have a strategy for each major beat leading up to the big day. This should include a release date announcement, a Next Fest or demo beat, any events you’re participating in, and of course, launch day.

Then, go back from your game's release date, and divide the year leading up to it (or however long you have) into phases: assets preparation and polish behind the scenes, announcement, previews, and release. If you're short on time, you might have to skip some of those - but never skip the assets prep phase, trust me, you don’t want to rush the core impression players will have of your game.

Once you've agreed the timeline with your team, add it all to your production calendar and remember it - set up reminders on every device you own if you have to. Everyone should have access to this timeline - whether they touch marketing or not - to ensure you have everything you need for each stage.

In a lot of cases, this marketing timeline will also have to change quite quickly: production and third-party delays are commonplace and if you don’t add buffer time into the timeline, you’ll end up having to rush things later down the line.

Divide and conquer

Especially in small teams, it’s important to remember that everyone needs to be involved in marketing the game. Sit down and establish your team’s strengths and weaknesses and areas where you might need outside support from an agency or contractor. 

Remember that marketing is a full-time job for a reason - it’s not just going to be a few tweets here and there to effectively market your game.

So plan ahead, get help where you need it, and give yourself lots of time to ensure your game gets the marketing it deserves.

Not sure where to start? Take a look at how Mooncat Games helps indie and AA games run successful launch campaigns without breaking the bank. We’re here to help!

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