Summer Is the Best Time to Reset
Every summer, business seems to slow down as emails take longer to get answered, decision-makers disappear on holiday, and sales cycles seem to pause. This is particularly “extreme” in the Nordics, as 4-weeks holidays are a standard, which is rarely present in the rest of the world. Instead of seeing this as lost momentum, I treat summer as one of the most valuable strategic periods of the year and wish to share some tips on how to turn it into an advantage for an indie studio.
While at MiTale we usually have a 12-18 months roadmap set, both in business development and marketing strategies, as a small team it is easy to spend the first six months of the year constantly reacting. Client work, production schedules, proposals, events, unexpected opportunities, and day-to-day operations quickly fill every available hour. Before you know it, half the year is behind you, and you've barely had time to ask whether the strategy you started with still makes sense.
Summer gives you that opportunity! FINALLY there is time to reflect and analyse the data, either as a player data, partnerships and finances. No matter how small team you might be running, data is your best friend and should be treated with care. Data also includes teamwork processes, evaluating what worked and what did not, understanding what aspects need improvements and also what did perform well to become possibly new practice to scale upon. The best part about this approach is that you see actual results, and not base your next steps on assumptions. For me as a CEO, assumptions are the most dangerous “feature creeps” in business development. As an example, let’s look at marketing efforts. We as a team work with external partners for marketing and PR, simply because our team members really do not enjoy marketing, which is very common for small indie teams. Data will also understand your limits and finding the right partners to help you overcome them, so in case of marketing some possible questions you could address:
Which marketing campaigns generated leads? Leads can be game sales, wishlists, subscribers, followers, Discord members or whatever campaigns and efforts you have been working on.
Which channels consistently brought traffic? Should one scope down to the channels that resonate to the audience and skip the channels that seem to be “lost in the void” - most likely yes!
What kind of content resonated with your audience? This will help you understand what people wish to hear from your team and about your games, otherwise you will be posting random content not generating any engagement (been there, done that…).
Which projects proved most profitable and where did you spend time without seeing meaningful returns? This refers to the actual income and returns on your investment, which is not just financial investment as ads but also your time and efforts are the most most valuable asset of your team! One of the common heartbreaking moments is seeing no interactions with the content that you have put so much work and love into, and we do not want to experience that.
Do not approach this as celebrating wins or dwelling on mistakes, it is all about identifying patterns. The first half of the year gives you enough information to adjust your course before the second half begins. Small changes made now can have a much bigger impact than waiting until the end of the year to review what happened.
Indie business development should never be static, especially when what you really seek is building a sustainable environment for the team to keep working on the games they wish to create. One of the biggest mistakes small studios make is creating a marketing plan in January and sticking to it regardless of what the numbers say. Instead, strategies should evolve, but evolve based on the data you have because these are the reality of the current results of your efforts, market situation and many other factors that you do not really have any control over. What you do have control over, is what you do next!
If your analytics tell you that developer insights consistently outperform promotional posts, lean into that. If newsletters convert better than social media, invest more time there. If a service isn't attracting interest, revisit how you position it and so forth. You know your strengths and weaknesses the best, so make adjustments accordingly.
Marketing isn't about following a fixed schedule, it is about learning from your audience and adapting. Summer is often the first chance many teams have to do exactly that - refresh your story, steps you need to take and type of partnerships you might need. This also means to refresh website(s) and sales decks to be relevant to NOW and not describing the company as it looked a year ago. Therefore, while time seems to slow down, use it for:
Update your pitch deck(s)
Replace outdated screenshots, gifs, clips of your games and products
Rewrite service descriptions based on the current needs on the market
Update the portfolio and add recent client work
Improve project summaries and remove anything that no longer reflects where your business is today.
These aren't glamorous tasks, but they make every future conversation easier. A confident sales meeting often starts long before with a clear, polished material that tells your story effectively.
While Nordics might be “asleep”, the industry calendar never truly stops. Games conferences, publishing events, business matchmaking sessions, and networking opportunities start filling the calendar surprisingly quickly after summer. This is when you need to make priorities on which events to participate and which to skip, what partnerships to pursue and which ones to leave behind. If you have done the steps from above, these are all done based on strategic plans and not assumptions, without rushing to prepare a week or just a few days before an event.
When you start approaching business leads or meeting requests start arriving, your focus can stay on building relationships instead of scrambling to update slides the night before. For us who run indie studios, careful preparation is a competitive advantage. Large companies often have dedicated marketing departments, business developers, and sales teams who handle this, and in case of indies we usually do not have even one full-time worker to handle it. This is why more care needs to be taken in every step you take as the same people creating games are often responsible for business development, marketing, community management, partnerships, and client communication. That makes preparation even more valuable, having every hour invested during a quieter season saves multiple hours later, when production deadlines and event schedules collide.
Summer is the best time to figure out how we can make the second half of the year stronger than the first. When the industry returns from holiday mode, you-are-ready! Sometimes the most productive period of the year isn't when everyone is moving fast, but it is when you finally have the space to decide where you are actually going.
This is why I find summer to be the most productive season as a leader of a team and a company, and love every second of it! MiTale will be present at Gamescom Cologne once again with a 40m2 booth at Indie Area, presenting multiple PC titles and our upcoming board game title. We have a lot of work ahead in the preparations, which I will share in the next blog post.
Yours,
Nat
