Where and how to advertise your kickstarter?

Is there a BGG page for your game?

Nowadays with Kickstarter, there are more and more people to whom you can "shop" your game to. What do I mean? Well instead of owning 100% of nothing, you can partner with people and make deals with some of the newer Publishers that have (or had) sold games in your genre.

It helps for a game to have a "fan-base"... How do you get one? With the right Publisher, they can market your game to people who like your genre of game... Especially if they have produced a 4X and you say a "Deck-Builder" but both with a Sci-Fi/Space theme...

I know of other people who are new to the Publishing business - but they too look for games that they might be able to market to their backers. Sometimes they want to produce their own games, but other times they might be willing to make a good deal and partner with a designer.

Best thing to do is SEARCH past Kickstarters and see what names pop-up several times. Aside from Mantic who have been producing all kinds of KS for miniatures, there are a few companies like Minion Games, Tasty Minstrel Games, that all operate in the KS domain. There are others like Jason Glover from Grey Gnome Games ... who kinda trolls TGC and looks for gems to publish.

But instead of trying to create your own community... Plug-in to an existing one interested by your type of game!

That's my advice... don't go it alone. Unless you are willing to start very small (max 200 backers) and escalate with time with more game titles. This is possible if you also want to become a Publisher (over time).

Personally I'd rather focus on design and thinking up new concepts that work with my game... And have somebody handle the dealings with Manufacturers, support the Q&A with Backers, get better deals as they produce more games, build a better community, etc.

I have no problem with my Publisher making good on my game. I want them to succeed - because it means that my odds of success are better.

Cheers and good luck with your game.

Hmmm... Are you saying "what would a new 'designer' have to offer..."?

Well maybe your game fits into what they are trying to offer as a Publisher. You know some Publishers stick to one kind of theme/genre and look to offer more game titles in that them/genre.

If you do a quick look at BGG you'll find that there are over 16,000+ Publishers... And you ask yourself: "How can that be?" Odds are most are vanity Publishers. We've been discussing this - because it is an important topic. If people say the "Board Game Industry" is small - I'm not so sure with THAT MANY Publishers... With 85,000+ games in the BGG database, that would mean an average of 5 game per Publisher.

So my guess many are Vanity Publishers with at most one (1) or two (2) games.

Like I said SMALLER Publisher are looking for more FINISHED products. Sure they'll make changes to refine the game to look different and in many cases more professional - maybe even closer to their "brand"... Like I know Jason Glover from Grey Gnome Games is particular about the SIZE and FORMAT of his boxes. So nowadays even if you INVEST in artwork, it's probably not a loss... Because some of the smaller Publishers are looking for a more final product. Heck maybe even a more known Publisher might pick it up - because they too like the way the product looks!

The thing is a Publisher wants to PUBLISH more games. If they need to design every game they publish - it's going to be a harder road than choosing "gems" they find and refine them to perfection... Even with a routine of one (1) KS yearly - because it takes about that much time for a KS from beginning to end... That means one (1) game a year. Ten (10) years, ten (10) games ... or less with more SUCCESSFUL BRANDS.

That's another question: "Can your game become a popular BRAND?" Obviously this implies designing for expandability... Can your game go beyond 1 or 2 expansions??? Is your product geared for becoming a brand?

So what new 'designers' have to offer - depends on who LIKES your game. As @Jay says: "Even a positive review from Zee Garcia" doesn't mean your game will SELL.

Note: Not all designers aspire to become Publishers.

You should really start with a BGG page. Then post the rules for download. Then send some prototypes for review.

This will probably take you at least a couple of months.

Oh, and visit conventions if you can.

When are you launching your Kickstarter? I'm launching next week and trying a couple of marketing services. If you can wait, I'll tell you about my experience with them

From my experience, there's no magic bullet for marketing.

We did a combination of paid adds on bgg/kicktraq etc, review videos, posting on the related forums, and going to Essen to demo the game.

Still, for us it seemed that the most efficient marketing tool was the Kickstarter itself. So having a proper campaign page is paramount.

I've seen some other campaigns do their pre-launch marketing well. It usually involved having an extremely good quality presentation video and artwork which they posted basically everywhere.

While facebook page itself and facebook adds are rather pointless, there are facebook boardgaming groups with large following where you can post about your upcoming game.

However, unless you have a really good quality art and video it is unlikely to be efficient.

What do you mean you never got a hit? As in, you didn't even get a single click on your ads? I find that impossible to believe being that you have to buy a minimum of 500000 impressions last I checked. Is that what you mean?

When I was programming with allegro, the forum I used had a banner ad system for their users which was free. Users added their banner to the system and put the code on their web sites so that they would advertise other people's game while the others advertise their own games.

It would be cool to have such system here on bgdf or board gamegeek.

I don't say they have to be displayed on BGDF. I said they have to be displayed on website of users that use the service.

So far, I placed an AdSense banner on my board game design web site. I get around 4$ per year in revenue. I tried to adding the same banner on other of my websites to see if it changes something.

Now the problem with adsense is that it's not always about games, while I would like to only have ads about Board games, video games, role playing games, etc (except gambling). That is what I call positive ads, like on BGG, if I see an add for a board game, it does not matter to me as I go there to get information about board games. If somebody paid or not for it does not change the results.

I don't have a super popular web site, so solution a could be to sell my add space for really cheap like 5$ or 10$ per year. But then I have to handle money, contracts and other boring stuff.

Or I could use a community ad system where people place ads strictly about games. Place the banners on my website and incite other to do the same. It follows the idea that I promote your stuff, and you promote my stuff.

Now I might not get any revenue on short term, but once I got a game to get published (I intend to make video board game apps) I might generate a few additional sales and the ads will be displayed on a much larger audiance than my own web sites. Since it would be free, I could also promote my free Print and Play games. I rather want people to know more about my games than getting a few additional dollars.

I made a bit of research and there seems on source forge to be many different open source banner management system to handle that. Maybe this summer, if people are interested, I could take a look to install it on my server. I would like to have a system that could require at most to approve submitted ads just to make sure I don't end up with gambling or pron.

Anybody interested in the idea?

It does not have to be only game sites, but it could be sites about games. If somebody have a blog or podcast, he can put the banner ad to promote other people's game while promoting his blog on other people's web sites.

Not sure exactly what you are referring to. I have a group of websites related some how to games that can all be found here:

http://lariennalibrary.com/

But that is not something new, it has been there for a long time.

I think there were few commercial project with allegro, possibly because it was not a library designed for commercial development. You probably could do it, but there was better stuff out there.

To give you an idea, here was the top 25 projects on the depot:

https://www.allegro.cc/depot/index/pop

Strangely, my Sound Wave Generator is in the list, but not my Wizardry Legacy.

So most projects seemed to have been free projects. As for the quantity of different ads, I don't recall how many there was, if it was even possible to know. You never got the same ad for sure, but they eventually came back.

Still, consider the amount of people who program video games in allegro to be much more limited than the number of people who design or talks about board games. Which could be extended to table top role playing games, as mechanics are similar to board games, board games as apps, since there are still board games, and turn based strategy video games, which plays similarly to board games.

I imagine there could be a way to make various ad groups for more specific targeting (all apps together, all kickstarter together, all blogs together, etc ). It depends on the software I use, not sure yet how it works.

It could have some long term potential. I am sure people would like to advertise their stuff by adding banners. But now it depends if there are enough people with web sites that are willing to place those banner.

Thanks for the link Keeper.

Evil ColSanders, I tried BackerClub and it's sister site BackerX for marketing. BackerClub has thousands of superbackers as members and you promise them an incentive like discounts, etc. Since my product is already pretty cheap, I offered a prototype card and the response was poor. No one from BackerClub backed yet. They promise to give you your money back if you don't reach the amount you paid for advertising. We'll see how that plays out.

BackerX is about generating a number of backers on the first day and to do that, you choose the number of rewards you want people to back and then pay for 80% of the reward, and the backers pay the rest. It's like guaranteed backers for your advertising money. I only got about 9 backers or so. So I asked for a refund of the rest and it was granted.

Both sites seem to work if your project is interesting to their members and they promise to give you your money back if it doesn't work out. Got refund from BackerX. Let's see if BackerClub offers a refund if not enough of their members pledge.

Says the man who is getting paid by Zuckerberg! LOL

I've looked into Facebook ... and there is NO WAY that it can be "incredibly effective". I'm not a PRO at FB ... but I have tried to USE it. And what I have learned BY DESIGN is ... FB WORKS BACKWARDS!

And BTW my COUSIN WORKS FOR FACEBOOK (As an Account Manager).

The idea is basic: build a community around your game.

So this means getting a bunch of people to LIKE your game and become FRIENDs of your game also.

WRONG!!!

Facebook does NOT want you contacting or soliciting people YOU DON'T KNOW. I know I've TRIED it... The effectiveness of the website for TRYING to amass a group of people is EXTREMELY UN-USER FRIENDLY!!! It's a rotten interface: You got to contact each person that gave you a LIKE and TRY to friend them. If you contact like 20 people, you will be prompted: "Only connect with people YOU KNOW!"

This does ZERO for building a community.

Then you have to go through a HUGE LIST that can take WEEKS to contact like 200 people. Imagine if you had 1,000 people ... it could take like 3+ months just to make them friends... Add to this FB ANNOYING WARNING and ultimately BLOCK you from trying to make strangers friends.

Facebook WANTS to work BACKWARDS: Tell your FRIENDS to LIKE your game.

Maybe if I had 1,000 of friends I could do that. But I don't. I want to build a community AROUND THE GAME.

Targeting ADS on FB is crap too. All you get is LIKES... people who maybe read your posts. I've got 250+ LIKES and about 80 FRIENDS (That my community so far) and all you will ever get is LIKES.

No conversion from a LIKE to a BUY. How do I know this? Because I have TRIED it already last December 2015 to June 2016 (about 6 months of "community building"). I spent good money TRYING to build a community. Still when it came time to support me in my TGC Crowd Sale - nobody bought the game (From FB).

I even had people message me on FB telling me they will buy the game; and then when the time came, nobody showed up... It's like telling everyone you are going to have a party and then nobody shows up... total, utter shame.

Mostly your ADs are targeting the people you ALREADY have as FRIENDS! I've tried to connect with "Friends of Friends" which is about 65,000 people and seeing IF I could convince them to buy my product.

Only some more LIKES. I know LIKES drive the show. But they aren't enough. You MUST convert LIKES to FRIENDS if you want to have a community. Otherwise the LIKE remain strangers you cannot contact directly.

Plus IF nobody LIKES your posting, it won't get very far either.

So what FB wants you to do is BOOST your posts... What this does is effectively communicate with YOUR FRIENDS! But again you want to GROW your friends... And that's the problem, because FB works the other way around!!!

FB is ALL WRONG!!!

FB wants you to PAY MONEY to reach YOUR Friends... Total, absolute WAIST of good, hard earned money. If FB wanted to improve, it should TARGET ALL your Friends whenever you post something to them. Then it might be acceptable to TRY and target "Friends of Friends" to add more people to your list of Friends.

But like I say, the WAY FB does it... it's a struggle and very HARD way of doing so. However I'm no Social Media Guru. I've just TRIED with what FB had to offer and my conclusion is that it's pure garbage. Implemented backwards.

EVEN WORST: Product Pages can't have FRIENDS. So you need to LINK back to your Designer FB page and hope people make the LINK between YOU and YOUR GAME! More garbage implementation.

I doubt FB will change it: it's FREE money to them. If you want to have a post seen by your OWN FRIENDS, you need to pay money to do so. If they are already Friends - why the F- do I want to spend money trying to get them more involved if they aren't converting?!