Summary
Me presenting my digital marketing strategy for Wayward Terran Frontier: Zero Falls at General Assembly
One day, I got sick of working a minimum wage job in a mailroom delivering Amazon packages to tech workers and decided I’d rather be one instead.
So, I shelled out $2,000 to a fancy-pants tech bootcamp in San Francisco so I could learn how to market goods and services on the internet.
Then, I met a conspiracy theorist and a Czech metalhead who had decided to build an entire open-world space game by themselves just to spite their enemies.
These were people who were skilled enough to make six-figure-a-year salaries in fancy tech jobs, yet they chose to eek out a meager living on early-access income while subsisting on diets comprised of Red Bull and styrofoam ramen for a crowd of two-hundred internet randos who never appreciated anything they did.
Game developers sure are an odd bunch.
I tried to help them out using some of the skills I was learning at General Assembly. Here’s what happened.
Tactics
- Facebook Advertising
- Influencer Outreach
- SEO
I started by shutting myself in a room so I could interact with their product, a space simulation RPG called Wayward Terran Frontier: Zero Falls, while I took notes on my user experience.
Or, in plain English, I spent a weekend playing their game and trying to get to know it a little.
I brainstormed ideas. I wrote copy ideas on a notepad. I thought about the kinds of people who were most likely to enjoy it and why.
Then, I corroborated or disproved my assumptions using Facebook and Google Analytics data to make two different buyer personas. I called these personas “Games are Art Dan” and “PC Master Race George.”
Then I took all that information and turned it into an online business strategy.
I planned and managed a Facebook advertising campaign for Zero Falls during the 2018 Steam Summer Sales event. We split-tested different combinations of copy, headlines, and two different audience groups based around interest-targeting. We also split two different landing page variations made with Unbounce.
One of the Unbounce landing pages we made for the campaign. Artist did the art. I wrote the copy.
Shortly after that, I emailed a group of 50 gaming influencers on YouTube and Twitch whose channels prominently featured either spaceship games or games with crafting elements. I sent them all a description of the game and why I thought they would enjoy it, and offered them a download key.
Results
We almost immediately started to see results once the Facebook campaign was underway. Zero Falls saw a nearly three-fold increase in the game’s average conversion rate by the time the ads had stabilized during the first weekend of the sale.
Conversion rate: 7.23%
CTR: 2.94%
CPC: $0.295
The influencer campaign did even better.
Out of the 50 YouTubers contacted, one (Many a True Nerd) ended up reviewing the game and did a video that earned 32,000 views.
The traffic generated from that review generated approximately $10,000 in revenue.
At a price point of $29.99 per Steam key, that’s a positive ROI of 566.89%.
You can read more about my process at this guest post I made for GildedOctopus.
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