Great Question!

If I had to take a wild guess, you’re someone working on your own game and bumped into the inevitable marketing process with no idea where to start. And I get it. Before I did marketing, I developed games by myself for about 10 years until I made my career pivot.

Personally, I never really bothered much with marketing at the time, as I simply believed that If I made a game that’s great, surely it would sell itself. In a way, I suppose that’s true when games like Schedule 1 seem to pull it off, but marketing isn’t always conscious.

Picture This

Let’s say you have a great idea; you want to merge a farming sim with souls-like fighting mechanics (bless your heart). That’s marketing right there! You’ve essentially determined the USP of your game by building upon a popular genre with a unique twist.

Whether conscious or unconscious, you’re bound to make marketing decisions that help put your game on the market and influence how people perceive it. Now, with 8639 indie games released on Steam in 2024 alone, I want to help you stand out.

1. Identify Your Target Audience

All good marketing starts at pinpointing your target audience so you can make a game for them and communicate your game’s value to them. What you want to avoid at all costs, is a game that tries to appeal to everyone, as it will resonate with no one.

Think about it like this. With millions of games available online, why would people want to spend time and potentially money on yours? For this, you have to know what audience you cater to, and the more specific the better. Everything else then follows from this.

I recommend using this classic segmentation method (using market data):

  • Demographic (e.g. age, gender, income)
  • Geographic (e.g. location, rural / urban / suburban)
  • Psychographic (e.g. beliefs, values, budget)
  • Behavioral (e.g. hobbies, habits, social media use)

And remember to be specific! It might feel counterintuitive to limit your reach, but with no advertising budget or brand awareness, you need a base of support first that is willing to follow development and help spread the word about your souls-like farming sim.

2. Establish Your Game’s USP

By delving into online spaces and investigating your target audience’s feedback, you get to pinpoint their exact wants and needs. Maybe you’ll find that people who love Hay Day are generally fed up with their boss and wish they could use it to release some steam…

This way, you should find an unoccupied space in the market that your game can take up. Ideally, your game then provides a solution to a problem that your audience faces. As a result, you have your USP! The main appeal behind your game and the reason why.

In case your game is nearly finished, this USP could help you focus your efforts and prioritize the features that really make your game shine. Not only will this help you delight your target audience, but it will also give you an actionable plan to improve upon.

3. Develop a Content Strategy

If you got this far, you should know who you’re talking to and what you’re talking about, allowing you to think about how to talk to them. Generally, this process is very specific to your own situation and the place for you to get creative, but I can give a few pointers.

Firstly, understand what you’re trying to achieve. Is it gaining awareness, gathering feedback, or increasing your Steam wishlists? Then, think of content that allows you to accomplish that. This, alongside a strong CTA, will allow you to guide your audience.

Secondly, find a nice calendar app online and fill it in with the type of content you’d like to post and also where. Just take a look at your target audience and think about what channels you can use to best reach them. My advice? Use BlueSky and Reddit.

4. Set Realistic Goals

Before anything is put in motion, reflect on the previous steps and assess if what you wrote down is within your scope. Sometimes less is more, and I couldn’t stress that enough in terms of marketing. You do not have to post on every social media imaginable.

It might be tempting, but put yourself in the shoes of your target audience and remind yourself of who and where they are. You could post on TikTok and stumble on some overworked Hay Day players, but you might just have a better chance on LinkedIn…

Heck, if you had to read a blogpost on how to market an indie game with no budget, I assume you’re either working by yourself or in a small team with plenty of work on your hands already. Just focus your efforts and spend your time and effort wisely.

If you need a steam page, make a steam page; if you need a trailer, make a trailer; if you need an entire blog for the purpose of a crazy ambitious content marketing strategy…, maybe don’t. EITHER WAY, understand what’s important and prioritize that.

Additionally, understand what’s within your control. If you’re aiming to release your game on Steam, you can only really focus on wishlists. In that case, aim to get 7000 so that the Steam algorithm will actively push it out to people (and publish your store page asap!).

5. Build a Community

Lastly, with a marketing plan at your disposal, start interacting with people and invite them into the world that you’ve been creating! It’s crucial that you work on building a community of people that are willing to support your content and development.

We can’t afford to spend thousands on advertising so we need to find ways to organically reach people and gain momentum. Even the most well-known indie games like Celeste and Hollow Knight stuck to this approach and I know that it can work for you too!

Just don’t wait until your game is perfect before showing it off to your community, simply invite them into the development process and embrace their feedback. This way, you get to draw people into your world and make them a part of it!

Summary

With this 5-step framework, I hope to have provided you with an actionable plan that allows you to kickstart your marketing succesfully! There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to marketing so don’t panic if you feel like you’re doing it wrong.

As long as you know your audience, your game’s USP, and have a general content strategy to reach these people and build up a community, you’re on the right track. However, if you do have any questions, join us on Discord and ask away!

(PS: you can wishlist ONEiRA on Steam starting today!)