How Much Does It Cost To Market An Indie Game?
Indie game budgets are always tight. Game budgets are always tight, period. It can be tough to budget for something as volatile as marketing, especially when costs vary so much from one service to another. We talked last week about marketing a game completely for free, and while that’s absolutely doable, sometimes you want to spend a little money to go the extra mile.
Digital Marketing Costs
As digital marketing is on the rise, so are the costs, unfortunately. There are gurus that promise you insane ROI’s, companies that guarantee their 400$ training will solve all your problems and net you thousands of wishlists, or oversaturated small twitch accounts that don’t post content. When looking to spend on digital marketing, there are a few legitimate avenues that will help boost your game’s visibility.
Please note that advertising methods alone will not show results. Adcopy, captions, consistency, target audience, and more are required to see true results.
Online Advertising
Costs can vary WIDELY depending on certain factors, but online advertising such as Google Ads, Facebook/Meta Ads, and Twitter Ads allow you to define set monthly and daily budgets for adspend. Google Ads, for example, recommends a budget of between 100$-150$ a month to see results. However, you can budget as low as 50$ a month and still see clicks and impressions.
Social Media Marketing
We always recommend and suggest organic social media marketing first, as sometimes you can go viral, or end up doing better with organic engagement than with paid ads. However, Facebook/Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok offer paid advertising to boost existing posts. You can, in theory, not have an existing account to post advertisements on social media, but it’s always better to have a proper account with a strategy and consistent content. Pricing structures often offer budgets between a few dollars to several hundred or even thousands of dollars per campaign.
Influencer Partnerships
This, again, is in theory able to be done for free. Cultivating relationships with influencers and content creators and asking them for favours and offering promotion in return is a fantastic way to get your foot in the door, and it (to some) can come across as more genuine, as they know the streamer isn’t getting paid for it. However, it takes much much longer to develop a genuine relationship with a streamer to the point where they feel comfortable and empowered to promote and play your game. Sometimes you don’t have the time for this, or sometimes you’re an introvert and the thought of forcing yourself to make a friend for promotion purposes feels yucky.
However, the flip side of this coin is that you sometimes don’t have access to the perfect streamer or content creator for your game, or the ones you know don’t have a big enough range. Most (if not all) creators/influencers and streamers have emails or talent representations in their “About me” section, and can be easily contacted for a partnership. Cost varies WILDLY depending on things like reach, engagement rate, followers, views, and more. Some may charge a flat fee per content, and others work on a commission/performance-based model.
Traditional Marketing Costs
Beyond Digital Marketing there lies the world of Traditional Marketing (or Tradmark. That’s not a thing at all, we’re just trying to make it a thing. Like “fetch,” but cooler). These strategies can still be effective for promotion and marketing in the game world, but it’s important to be very discerning. As with any marketing source, throwing money at something you don’t believe in will never yield results.
Print Materials
Handing out a business card on the street is a great way to make an impression - albeit a bad one. That being said, there are other things you can use print marketing for. Creating posters, merchandise, prints, and even pins for your game can help bring some extra money in on sales as well as helping people promote your game by wearing shirts or pins. Costs associated vary based on design complexity, quantity, and printing method. There are some print-on-demand services that will offer bulk printing discounts, but expenses can still add up, especially for premium materials.
Events
Contrary to popular belief, having a booth or a table at a gaming event/convention/trade show isn’t just for the big studios.You can find space at small, local events near you for a couple hundred dollars, or if you want to scale up you can reach out to larger conventions (such as marketing your game at GenCon in the US, or PAX East). Please note that you should always carefully evaluate the return on investment of attending these events, and when you’re first starting out, prioritize those with the most potential for you to be exposed to networking opportunities.
Public Relations (PR)
PR and Marketing can be one and the same with a lot of overlap, but since Corvian doesn’t offer PR at the time of writing this, allow us to break it down. PR includes press releases, media outreach, and press kit creation, among other things. It can be done in house, but games with a dedicated PR team almost always do better (almost!), and this can incur significant costs. If you’re choosing to do this in-house to save money, all the power to you. Just make sure you allocate enough time for media outreach to get your game out there!
But wait, how much is this actually going to cost? What number should go on my spreadsheet?
Before we can answer that question, let’s look into a couple of the most common hidden costs that can quickly sink you, before we get you excited about numbers. We’ll be quick, I promise.
Localization and Translation
It’s important to understand the costs of adapting your game for different languages and regions. If this is something you’re looking to get, expenses can add up if you’re targeting a global market. Investments can include professional translators, voice actors in your target language, and localization specialists to make sure you’re being accurate and culturally relevant in the different languages of the game.
Licensing Fees
If you’re using copyrighted material in your game (background music, a clip from a movie, any names or titles, etc.) you must get proper licensing and permissions from the copyright holders. This can include but is not limited to music, artwork, and intellectual property. You can’t use it either in your game or in your marketing materials without proper licenses. A 100$ license will be chump change compared to the thousands of dollars in financial penalties and potential lawyer’s fees with any legal issues, so make sure you budget for licensing fees upfront.
Finally, the million dollar (sometimes literal) question: How much does it cost to market a game?
There of course is no one size fits all answer, as it depends on your marketing needs. However, a low-end estimate (best for an indie developer with a very limited budget) can look like this:
Online Advertising: $500 - $1,000 per campaign
Social Media Marketing: $100 - $500 per month
Influencer Partnerships: $100 - $500 per influencer collaboration
This can provide a solid jumping off point for budgeting, but can vary depending on things like campaign objectives, target audience, and the competitiveness of your market and niche.
If you’re a developer with a larger budget, or you’re looking to get some higher end marketing, your budget will look more like this:
Online Advertising: $5,000 - $10,000 or more per campaign
Social Media Marketing: $1,000 - $5,000 or more per month
Influencer Partnerships: $1,000 - $5,000 or more per influencer collaboration
This reflects a higher level of spending that is necessary for more extensive campaigns, broader audience reach, and collaborations with high-profile influencers.
If all of this overwhelms you, and you just don’t know what to invest your money in, book a call with us. If your budget looks like the first estimate, there is sliding scale pricing available for you. If your budget looks like the second estimate, there is a-la-carte pricing for you to get the best value for your money. No matter your budget, we are here to help!
