Thoughts on Marketing an indie Visual Novel

Everyone knows (or should know) that marketing a game is one of the most important facets of creating an indie game. I thought I'd share some information about our marketing efforts and shine a (somewhat dim) light on the process.

We are constantly improving our brand, evolving as we go. This is a bit contrary to the usual marketing echo chambers, as the normal first step is to design your brand first, but when working on an indie budget, you don't always have the funds to immediately get your brand identity created. As some of you recall, we didn't even have a logo when we launched, and just used a normal text header to identify ourselves.

While some might rightfully argue that rapidly evolving your brand identity can damage your brand, we respectfully disagree. Marketing is like art, there are certain established truths on what works and what doesn't but at the end of the day, only the results matter and the method to achieve that can be very subjective. Also, being a bootstrap indie developer gives us a huge advantage when it comes to competing with larger, established brands. We don't have a huge following yet, making it easier to pivot and react to what is working and what isn't. Compared to more structured, corporate marketing teams, we can be a lot more agile when it comes to jumping on opportunities that might present itself.

The attached image is an example of pivoting and evolving as we go. On the left is our older mailing list signup form, and on the right is the newer one. We constantly measure what is working and what isn't, and the older signup sheet wasn't working. Ironically we had a higher conversion rate with our very first, text only, no logo sheet than we did with the current older one. We measured the results and implemented a few changes. I feel the newer one will perform better at converting new signups, but time and more measurements will tell.

Life also gets in the way sometimes. While Infinite Stars is my passion, it is far from being my source of income. I still have to manage and run my second passion, my company that puts food on the table. I'm a huge fan of taking a day to plan, create, and schedule content a few months in advance. That way it's done, and I can focus on other things without worrying that my social media channels will quiet down. My Twitter posts are scheduled 3 months in advance, allowing me to not stress if I haven't created anything of value to post.

I'm also a bit more old school when it comes to business, perhaps due to my main income being in an industry that requires high levels of trust and carefully maintained relationships. As such, while I do believe there is a place for email marketing and cold calls, it should never replace traditional face-to-face relationships. Since I've started working with Infinite Stars, we've built several relationships with other people in the Visual Novel, Patreon, and Sci-Fi community. These are mutually beneficial relationships that will be critical to the success and viability of our project while adding value to the other party also. I'll never forget a business principle I picked up many years ago. When forming business relationships, they should always be "win-win" for both parties and that's how we strive to run our company. Our artists can vouch for this, as can our other partners, and I hope that this is something that our Patrons and fans will also be able to experience.

We have a few other unconventional marketing campaigns that haven't started yet, but I'll do an analysis and give feedback on the results once they have completed.

Also if you are a fan of science fiction, please consider signing up to our mailing list so we can send you an early access version of Infinite Stars once we launch. Alternatively follow our Patreon page if you aren't ready to pledge yet so you'll be notified of any changes.