Good marketing firms for indie games?

[watermark]

As I start getting ready to make commercial RPG Maker games, I would like to know if anyone can recommend a good marketing/PR firm for indie games? By marketing I include advertising the game as well as helping with Kickstarter or Greenlight.

I admit my experience with past marketing firms have not been good. For lack of a better term, they're all scams. It usually goes like this:

1. Firm sends very promising email saying how good they are at marketing games, how they will take care of your game, how they will write press releases, how much extra traffic they will generate etc. They even have official looking websites with official looking customer testimonials.

2. We pay for the service. Usu in the hundreds.

3. We get these obviously cookie cutter press releases and marketing material. Heck, even the response email we got after we complained was so obviously a cut-and-paste your name in blank email. And the result? Zero (or at least we couldn't notice a change) extra traffic. And this happened like 3 times already, basically all the one's we've tried so far. I mean if I wanted cookie cutter press releases I could've written them myself. Seriously.

Now, I don't believe every single marketing firm out there are scammers, despite what my experience is showing so far. And we are willing to pay good money for good marketing. By that I mean a firm that actually takes time to know your product and write custom marketing material for it. So, anyone have a good one to recommend? One that actually delivers results?

 

[Hudell]

When approaching one of those firms, ask them to tell you of another game they worked with before. Then search for the game, see how much content about it you can find and if possible, try to contact the developer.

If they refuse to give you the name of a game, they're probably trying to scam you.

 

[FlamingWolf - Zezaph]

I've been working in online marketing since 2006. 99,9999999% of those firms know nothing about online promotion.

Most of their marketing tactics tend to be very expensive ( because they place banner ads everywhere ), ineffective ( like sending press releases, which aren't the best place to start ) or "out of context" ( like working on the S.E.O. of your website, which is almost useless when you work with videogames )

So, I completely agree with @Hudell. See if they actually did some work for other games ( and, to be sure, contact the creators of the games and ask them if it's true or not ). And also ask them for some of their results on social media ( Facebook and Twitter in primis ). If they can keep a facebook page and a twitter account active, they are a good firm. Otherwise... run away

 

[Indinera]

Keep your money. The vast majority of them do nothing that you can't do yourself. And they want their money regardless of results (usually, none, as you said) which is a very ****ty approach IMO. You should give them a list of goals and they are paid depending on whether they meet them or not.

 

[Matseb2611]

Companies that take the money upfront usually wouldn't care much how well you game does. They already have their money. Look for the ones that take the cut from the sales instead. This way they have the incentive to promote the game and for the game to do well. The better the game does, the more money they get. This is true for promotions in all of media and not just games. I came across this a lot when publishing books as well.

 

[FlamingWolf - Zezaph]

I forgot to mention: firms that know how to do their job don't send promotional emails to random game developers. You go to them, not the other way around

 

[Indinera]

I forgot to mention: firms that know how to do their job don't send promotional emails to random game developers. You go to them, not the other way around

Which makes me wonder: watermark, have you already released something commercially (seems so, if you have already 3 experiences with PR firms)?

 

[watermark]

We seem to have a consensus: most marketers are scammers.  BD  Sigh... well let's keep looking, folks.

@Indinera! You are awesome. You are the goal I am striving for, as in, you get to make RPG Maker games for a living. I believe we're in the same generation that started RPG Maker 14-15 years ago when it all first began. Where you went on to live the dream full time, I went on to day jobs in other fields and left the RM world for years. But the passion refused to die, and now I'm back.

But we're going off topic. So back to your question: Yes, I've released games commercially with pals, mainly mobile games. You can take a look at them at our site:  

http://www.watermarkrpg.com

We all have full time jobs and these games were basically done in our spare time. They made some money but obviously not enough to make us quit our day jobs. My dream is someday to be able to make games full time (i.e. what you're doing.    ). 

As you can see from the site I have made commercial mobile games but no RPG Maker commercial games yet. However, with MV coming out, this is definitely something that can finally happen. For if MV can deliver all it promises, it can give engines like Unity a run for its money. And well RPG Maker is what got me into game making in the first place so I always have a soft spot for the series. I am planning to release commercial RPG Maker games through Steam and App Stores. Now hopefully if (and that's a BIG if, but hey one can dream right?   ) I win some money off the IGMC competition I can kickstart this dream sooner. If not, well I'll have to find some other way, maybe through kickstarter or indiegogo.

 

[Indinera]

Thank you. 

Games don't look bad at all, especially Sunken City. Might have made more on PC actually, especially during the 2010-2012 period (pre-KS and GL).

I can only wish you the best of luck, and make sure to work hard to deliver the best game possible.