On Marketing
visioNationstudios:
Cynthia,
Thank you for the breakdown. It does seem to get directly to the point of my initial question. It sounds like that's still the best way to go about things, for the most part. I appreciate the more detailed information, and for bringing them more into the current web mentality a little bit. It's something I've been harping on for months now with the rest of my team, and for people to reiterate the exact methods/ideas that I've been promoting is at least a confidence booster that I'm on the right track. Now if I could only get them to buy into the ideas as well...
Simon,
Thank you for the honest assessment and advice. I can answer a few of your questions. Yes, I've sent comp copies to the RPGNow reviewers (2 or 3 times in the last year), and have had no takers on actually reviewing the product. We've been reviewed by Megan Robertson (now a staff reviewer for RPGNow, and hosting her own UK site), and we're waiting on reviews this month from Mark Gedak and Chris Gath. I'll definitely look into more RPG.net reviewers though. And, though we have a flash preview of some of the pages on RPGNow, I've always felt a "quick guide" for a 436 page book was a little daunting. Nevertheless, it certainly needs done, so thanks for pointing that out as well. As for the other stuff, well, suffice it to say we're still trying to figure out how to cast our vision over the community in the most palatable (but intriguing) way possible.
Pelgrane:
Quote from: visioNationstudios on November 03, 2008, 09:25:00 PM
Simon,
Thank you for the honest assessment and advice. I can answer a few of your questions. Yes, I've sent comp copies to the RPGNow reviewers (2 or 3 times in the last year), and have had no takers on actually reviewing the product.
The rpgnow.com reviewers are notoriously bad at getting reviews done. I'm going to give OBS another kick about this.
It is the top ten most prolific rpg.net reviewers who are the most important. Ask them if they are willing to review before you send your work.
B. Charles Reynolds:
Market your web site independently from your products.
Make certain it is both search-engine-optimized and friendly and remember that the two are NOT synonymous.
If you have failed to submit a sitemap.xml file to Google, Yahoo and MSN Live, you have essentially failed to market your product/site on the web. Be sure to do this. Be sure it gets updated every time something new appears on your site. Be sure it gets re-submitted every time it's updated.
Go ahead pay for click advertising. A small budget of $10-20 can go a long way at Google if you target the right keywords.
Search engines LOVE frequently posted, fresh content. So... get your playtesters to blog about their sessions on your site. You'll get lots of the relevant content that search engines love without having to do any typing. (be sure to moderate, though, to stamp on spoilers)
Enable trackbacks and pingbacks for free external incoming links to your site. Again, search engines love these. Encourage your reviewers to link back to your web site catalog page for the product they're reviewing.
Try to have at LEAST one mass-market product available. Let's face it, RPGs are not mass-market products. They're a niche within a niche within a niche = very limited market. Having a product with more mass appeal gets traffic and traffic gets customers.
Ron Edwards:
"Paraplegic Racehorse," please provide examples of real role-playing games which have benefited from those techniques. I'm not saying that they haven't nor am I challenging you. I'm saying that the advice is pretty generic, sort of a standard consultant's textbook that might be titled Optimize Your Business on the Web (I just made that title up). In other words, whether each bit applies to role-playing publishing is an open question. In my experience, only a small part of what you described actually pays off. That doesn't negate your point, but it does make me interested in what games did benefit from each tactic you describe.
Best, Ron
B. Charles Reynolds:
I certainly don't have any such web-search trends and site data available. However, the fact still remains that on the web traffic = sales. Also, at least for Google, the combination of lots of (frequently updated) content and inbound links = higher rank/result = traffic.
I think that Guild of Blades is doing a wonderful job of marketing their products using, particularly, the also-mass-market product technique (board and card games in addition to RPGs). I've also used my browser's "view code" menu item to look at their site. While there are improvements which could be made, generally it's very well set-up and available to the search-spiders.
Goodman Games and their products get high listings in the search engines, though I'm not sure why. I haven't looked at their publicly consumable HTML/CSS. I can only guess that the reason is they have an optimized (enough) and friendly (enough) web site. It certainly doesn't hurt that they have a few popular and well entrenched titles, though.
Currently, my personal core business is taxicabs with honeybees rapidly rising in importance to my revenue stream. Games and game authoring have always been hobbies for me. I have started several businesses in various fields (one of which was education, so I know a thing or two about "advice") over the last fifteen years. I have watched the advice given to newcomers with a keen interest for the last ten years. Universally, the "basics" are not covered in that advice.
I'm not saying that lots of time and effort needs to go into this, but it certainly is something that should be addressed or you are likely to miss the impulse- and curiosity-buyers from outside your niche, whichever niche that is. The small-guys - most of us (I use "us" but I'm still in early business-formation stage and have only a few scribbled product outlines) - should be particularly concerned with bringing new "blood" into the market. In my various rovings through forums across the internet, I see a whole lot of names of games and companies crop up. Guess which ones I see the most? Those guys can sell just about anything on their name, alone.
We, on the other hand, need to be found. Somebody pretty much needs to be looking for exactly what we can provide, or at least something substantially similar. If we fail to make our product easily findable (read: indexed and relatively high-ranked within our niche and genre), then we essentially fail to market our products.
So, yes, the advice is very generic and does come across as textbookish. Many companies, and niche companies especially, often forget to do the basics or they just look at the "standard" industry advice and act on only the points raised in that advice. Well, the more generic marketing action-items such as the friendly handshake, press release, business card, logo emblazoned t-shirt (and other con-swag), interview, web site optimization and so on are simply not mentioned in these topics because the experts and "old-timers," if you'll forgive the phrase, assume that these are things already being done. Some of your best and most loyal customers may come from generic marketing techniques.
I guess my whole point to this response is just a reminder that the "generic" marketing advice remains every bit as valid and relevant in this industry as in any other. Also, in the era of rapidly-rising importance of the internet, being easy to find on the internet really should be considered one of the "basics." The purpose of marketing is not actually to sell products. That's just a convenient benefit because your marketing does not make the sale. Your sales pitch makes the sale. The real purpose of marketing is to be seen by potential customers.
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