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Marketing strategies.


RX8Toxic

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Hello fellow Skylords!

I am reaching out to see if there is anyone in the community/staff with a marketing background. This game would really benefit from some decent marketing. The game speaks for itself, but the word of mouth only goes so far...

I can see some small changes making a BIG difference!

  1. More updates/posts on social media:
    Something as simple as basic conversation starters is a great way to keep people seeing your posts on their feed and is more likely to be shared and commented on.
     
  2. Reaching out to mainstream YouTube channels for reviews
    All it takes is a heavy hitter on YouTube to review the game and you have a huge spike in player base. Has anyone ever reached out and seen if this can be done?
     
  3. Incentive Campaigns
    Run more Campaigns like the Halloween Promotion.  This will attract new players and entice old players to login.
     
  4. New Player bonuses
    One of the downfalls of this game is the time it takes to get your first deck started, why not give new players a little boost...
     
  5. Referral Program
    Encourage existing players to get their friends and family to play. Adding this would surly help both parties.

These are just a few ideas, but I think they could make a big difference!

 

Thanks! 

 

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4 hours ago, RX8Toxic said:

Hello fellow Skylords!

I am reaching out to see if there is anyone in the community/staff with a marketing background. This game would really benefit from some decent marketing. The game speaks for itself, but the word of mouth only goes so far...

I can see some small changes making a BIG difference!

  1. More updates/posts on social media:
    Something as simple as basic conversation starters is a great way to keep people seeing your posts on their feed and is more likely to be shared and commented on.
     
  2. Reaching out to mainstream YouTube channels for reviews
    All it takes is a heavy hitter on YouTube to review the game and you have a huge spike in player base. Has anyone ever reached out and seen if this can be done?
     
  3. Incentive Campaigns
    Run more Campaigns like the Halloween Promotion.  This will attract new players and entice old players to login.
     
  4. New Player bonuses
    One of the downfalls of this game is the time it takes to get your first deck started, why not give new players a little boost...
     
  5. Referral Program
    Encourage existing players to get their friends and family to play. Adding this would surly help both parties.

These are just a few ideas, but I think they could make a big difference!

 

Thanks! 

 

As Metagross already said, we would love to have someone on the team to tackle these kind of things, but we simply dont have time for them ourselves 😞 I actually have a background in marketing, but not enough time to combine it with my current tasks. On top of that, the fact we cant spend money on marketing greatly limits our options. 

As for your specific points;

1. I would love to have someone on the team with more experience on this, but so far everytime we increase the ratio of posts, the Facebook algorithm ''punishes'' us with less reach. For example, if we have a community update on friday, and a tournament on sunday, both posts will perform worse. 

2. The heavy hitters are the ones who request money, which we are not allowed to spend by EA rules. 

3. That was a last-minute throw-together idea from me, but definitly something I would like to do more often!

4. We are planning some extra archievements to kick start new players.

5. We used to have this, but Multi-accounting became a big issue. 😞

 

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  • 1 month later...

Hey RX8Toxic, definitely some good points there, and to anyone else reading this post, I want to introduce myself as the new Skylords Reborn Marketing manager / Outreach coordinator. 

Social media is a good way to keep everyone in the loop for updates and what's happening in the game, but with social media giants such as Facebook, organic reach (posts not boosted with real money) has been purposefully limited to push communities to pay for advertising. You can still get new people to see your post, but it won't be a lot if you do it with free posts. It's still an open question on what kind of advertising we are allowed to do, but rest assured we are developing marketing plans for all scenarios.

The new player bonus or referal bonuses tend not to always work as intended in F2P games, and as others have mentioned in this thread, it can lead to multi-accounting abuse to get those rewards. 

The main goal is not to get a huge spike in players who will then leave after 2 weeks (that will just put stress on the servers), but it's to focus on players who want to play a game like Skylords, who are interested in CCG/RTS games rather than trying any free to play game for a few days. 

Interesting story: Starcraft 2 had done something fantastic. It's a well known and complicated game to get into, with challenging mechanics and a lot of things going on. It enjoyed a lot of popularity in e-sports for the first 4-6 years of its life, huge prize pools. Then LoL and Dota 2 eclipsed it very quickly, and player numbers for Starcraft 2 kept dropping. There were constant discussions that the game was dying. Then, the game was made free to play, the maps that players enjoyed casually (Co-op play) were given a lot more support, and player numbers stopped declining and started increasing... for a game that originally came out in 2010. 

Moral of the story: If the price is free and players enjoy playing the game, and the entertaining elements are enhanced, then players tend to stick around and keep playing. Popular Reddit posts with content gifs also help 🙂 

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I absolutly agree, we have to get the _right_ players to try the game, now tons of kids taking a short absence from Fortnite or Minecraft (no offense intended to kids).

There should be some appropriate RTS-themed-groups on reddit (or even facebook?), maybe even nostalgia gameplay themes (good old Dune2 and Warcraft players, not everybody likes the Starcraft theme) with people interested in SR.

About the refferal programs: What could be interesting is something less harmful like an XP-Boost for the new player (or even the inviting player?), but I guess thats not worth the precious time of our Devs because it wont make a real difference.

Edited by Kapo
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  • 2 weeks later...

Hello guys, I've been meaning to reply to this topic for a while now and I was thinking of suggesting a few youtubers that could be of interest

A few choices that comes to mind would be Ssethtzeentach or Mandalore gaming, but I'm guessing those wouldn't be so simple to reach (even less pay for) given their popularity, so I've got a few people that maybe could be of interest, even if it's not something the team could use in the immediate future:

-SplatterCatGamming
-Boomstick Gaming
-Nerd Slayer
-Accursed Farms

I think Accursed Farms (Ross) would be specially favorable into making a video about it, maybe even a interview with the team consindering the video he made about the game back in the day. 

Nerd Slayer is pretty much self explanatory, I think he would be ideal since he covers Dead/dying games and I think he would also be a good boost if approached correctly so the coverage comes off in a ''light in the darkness'' sort of tone instead of the depressive one he gives in his ''Death of a game'' videos.

SplatterCatGaming is a indie games reviewer , but I'm assuming SR fits the description given it's position right? I think he may sitclose to Mandalore and Seth but maybe he's worth a shot down the line too!

Boomstick Gaming is also one that comes to mind and he does like games with interesting mechanics which makes SR a perfect fit for him to try out.

I'm not sure if this will be a issue regarding how you guys managed to accquire the IP from EA (not even sure if you guys have that) but if it's okay maybe they can be a start and eventualy bring bigger names to bing new blood. I'd also specially recommend you guys use those when major content is release, though I guess that goes wihout saying. 

I hope the suggestion is worthwhile, I unfortnatly don't know these youtubers personally but I feel they might be a good shot to start bringing attention to the game again, at the very least let you guys know of whom may be worth looking for in the future.

All that said, have a good one guys and keep up the good work, here's hoping Skylords Reborn becomes the next hidden gem those youtubers will cover in the future.

EDIT: I've just remembered that Twitter could also be a potential source to promote the game both in it's mechanics and future contents as well. 

Alot of indie devs have been using it to promote the development of their projects and to ask their followers for opinions.

I'm not sure if the team can provide content weekly but peraphs a few Concept Arts, Ideas for Future Content and, naturaly, work in progress videos/screenshots would likely be the fastest and most cost efficient way right now besides Youtube Videos.

Here's a Hashtag that is commonly used: #ScreenshotSunday

Edited by Samson
MOAR IDEAS!
Dutchy, Kapo, Metagross31 and 2 others like this
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  • 4 weeks later...

Really good suggestions here, and I just wanted to make it known that I am making a note of all these names and may reach out to them in the very near future. 

Additionally, if anyone also has suggestions on small-medium Youtube channels (5k-50k subscribers) that have either covered Battleforge in the past, or are currently focused on RTS/CCG games, let me know and you might see them making a video on Skylords Reborn in the future if I make the right impression 😉 

Edited by RuneSeeker
Volin, Dutchy and Metagross31 like this
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