YouTube

YouTube gives us the ability to be creative in the information we share with our consumers and allows us to be storytellers in doing so.

Create a strong brand through exposure

This is much the same as the points about building a strong profile and smart branding on Facebook. YouTube executive Bing Chen says you need to show your consumer what your brand is and use a good story to do so. (Robertson, 2011)

Pay attention to fundamentals

There’s no point having the tools there if you don’t use them. Make sure you tag your videos, create a story within the description and use annotations so that you can link your videos together.

Create brand engagement from your consumer

By managing your list of expectations for online media, you will be able to set out requirements for your consumer engagement. Do you want them to ‘like it’, ‘comment’ or ‘follow it’. If so, you will need to ensure you have the method for that set out before you create your video. Create good consumer engagement by  encouraging your consumer in the video to ‘like’ or ‘comment’ on your video when they have finished watching it. (Everett, 2011)

Lead Generation

Use the customer service skills we talked about earlier. Respond to your consumers comments with in-depth answers, such as why you’re thankful for their comments. (Robertson, 2011)

Ignition Studios has just finished writing a white paper on our experiences with online marketing and the methods we’ve used to market ourselves using this media.

Over the next few weeks we’ll share points contained in the document with you guys here on our blog.

This was written with the “self publishing indie developer” in mind and can be used by anyone who would find the basic business marketing and online media marketing techniques and tips we’ve used to market our company useful.
We’ve added in our research links into the article as well, as we thought you might find them as interesting a read as we did.

Introduction

Many games companies have started out with their main focus on creating games and not actively considering how it is they are going to market them. It’s a business mistake that happens time and again with many studios reporting on having done so. (Joslin, 2010) It’s not anyone’s fault in particular, it just seems to be the nature of the business when it comes to being an Indie games developer.

Historical Limitations

We’ve spent all of our time and momentum focused on creating brilliant games but we haven’t stopped to think about the marketing behind the business, or when we have stopped to think about it, we have been unsure of where to focus our energy and how much time would be required to do so properly. (Juuso, 2006)

• How do we market our game and company
• Who should we market to
• What markets are there
• What methods should we use to market our game
• How much time should we spend on marketing
• How do we measure whether we’re successful or not