Right, so. I need to put my big girl pants on about this. The only thing I like less than wasting precious development seconds on blogging, (sorry, love you, but this is HARD,) is researching marketing. I am not a marketer or SEO Wizard or any of those things. I'm a writer and a mom and a game designer and that leaves precious little to learn a whole new skill set to go along with those other things. So. I have a few options.
I could hire a marketing firm or team or whatever they call it to handle my marketing. But that sounds like MONEY MONEY MONEY which I... yanno.. don't have. (And I'll presume you don't either or you wouldn't be reading the blog of a cheap-ass developer.) I have actually emailed a few who seem to imply they work with indie developers. So far? Nothing. Not even a return email. So. I have no further information on how that works. IF I hear back I'll tell you more about the interaction.
I could reach out to people I know in marketing and look at bartering labor. I've talked to some people and gotten some advice. I haven't approached anyone about formal barter and I'm hesitant to do so because I like my relationships as they are and worry about straining them. So. In case it sounds like I've got a ton of buddies in that industry, nope. Don't expect any huge insights or expertise. Just some arrows in a righter direction.
I can bite the bullet, do some damn research and do the work myself. This, of course is the most reasonable solution and so far it's the method I'm getting the most movement out of. I'll try to share what little I can glean from research, experimentation, and insights from my friends in marketing. Anyway, here's some crap I'm putting together from reading and watching and asking questions when I can.
THINGS YOU CAN DO PROBABLY!
You can probably make a landing pad website for little to no money. Presumably, you have some kind of internet access if you're reading this. If not, maybe you can barter some time with people you know who do. (I don't have much good advice for landing pads if you have no internet access, this is my privilege showing and I'm interested in sharing advice if anyone has it.) But. If you only have a smart phone you can at least put up a Wordpress site for free to post a developer blog. This is a place people can point to if they're sharing information about your game. But most importantly, this is a place where people see where to 'take the next step'. That is. Your landing pad should tell them exactly how they can buy/get your game. It should pretty much just be that with maybe a link to your dev blog. (Like this site, actually. Heh. Fancy that.) Emmy Jonassen, aka Indie Game Girl has some strong opinions and advice on landing pads if you click here. I have no reason to argue any of these points, though many of these ideas feel counter intuitive. I'm not an expert though, and it doesn't feel too bad so I'll try it this way for now.
You can make a Facebook page and a Twitter account. They're free. There are neat programs like Canvas that help you make a flashy banner for free with no graphic design experience. So that's super keen! The next trick is to update those accounts once a week. If THAT wasn't enough extra work, you're also going to want to respond when people say shit to you. Because they're showing interest and that's good and those people might buy your game and or tell someone else who will. There's easy ways to do that than just check a million new social media accounts. I'm messing around with Hootsuite and it hasn't made me crazy yet. Again. Free version available.
You can set goals. Maybe I should have started with that? Anyway. The thinking here is that just live with game dev or novel outlining or cleaning your apartment, having concrete goals in mind is always better than just wandering thoughtlessly into the thick of it and hoping for the best. You can plan for things like hours spent per week on managing social media, number of names on a email list, or twitter followers. You can also plan for things like how many and which media/journalist types you'll reach out to this month. Or advice/articles you'll read a week as your sorting out your own marketing plan. The main idea is that you want concrete stuff you can put on a list and do and then cross off a list. Real, tangible, short term and reasonable things. I guess I'll give you my examples because why not?
I want 50 twitter followers on my game account. (Yep, this is small, but I can check it off and start up a new goal after that happens.)
I want to blog once a week at least. (Hey! Look at this! A blog post!) Again, I can check this off weekly and add a new one each week.
I want to get fifty people on a mailing list waiting to hear more about the game. <--- this I know less how to do other than try to drive traffic to the game site and hope my social media work does the job. But hey, experimentations!
I want to hear back from some marketing pr people on how much it costs to hire an expert. (I don't think I'll be able to afford it, even if I manage funding. But I want to know and then share it with you at least in oblique terms.) I can't control when this happens too much, but, it's still a thing I'm planning around.
Likewise, I want to hear back from some sites about their prices for putting ads on their site. I'm... not sure yet if I want to go that way if I get funded as I'm not yet convinced its a worthwhile use of money. But again, I want to know and have more information before I make a choice, and I want to share at least the steps in the process with you.
So that's my current list of pretty concrete goals. If your concrete goals include doing your own marketing research, I recommend starting with Indie Game Girl. She seems like she's got a good head on her shoulders, advocates for ethics and no budget advice which I totally dig. Here's her full site to look at.
Anyway, good luck, have a good week, and keep telling your story. Someone wants to hear it.