ok by popular demand, by which ofc i mean one person asked and activated my i love to talk about my interests trap, algie's bare bones marketing 101 (i am not an expert but i do have little a knowledge), and also common pitfalls for the indie creator.
disclaimer: every website about how to market as an indie creator is gonna tell u about using your personal social media to build a personal brand, giving ppl bits of your life to look at, making yourself relatable and appealing so ppl buy your stuff. this is not that. it's an effective marketing strategy for some ppl and up to a point, but i personally hate doing it; it feels to me like making yourself and a parasocial relationship with you into the product, and it is not a method i enjoy. also frankly i like when a product can stand on its own! i know we live in capitalism panopticon hellscape, and making good things is no guarantee of success, but neither is marketing yourself instead of your product. there is no guarantee of success, so like. do what ur comfortable with.
(this also goes for the stuff i say; there is no guarantee of success, just things that have usually worked a little better or a little worse, and so u can do literally whatever. but some knowledge can help.)
marketing campaign strategy 101:
step 1: define your target audience.
no i know, but listen. yes big corporations love to use age and gender demographics, but that's not necessarily what i mean; i mean look at your work and think about the kind of person who you think would like it, or who you want to like it.
how u define this is up to you, but think about it for a bit. is it for queer sci fi fans? robot enthusiasts? disillusioned retail workers? furries? obvs a lot of indie creators make things for themselves, so it can help to consider what thoughts and feelings and parts of yourself you were drawing on when u made it, and extrapolate from there. now DON'T just slap that on ur marketing, but get that in your brain.
step 2: find what's marketable.
ask yourself, what parts of your creation will your target audience like? ofc you cannot know for sure, but what do you think they'll like? if youve had a chance to get like beta readers or playtesters or whatever, ask them what they liked. find your big themes and stuff for sure, but also small things. phrase that sticks in the brain. eyecatching picture. tearjerking scene. make a list or a folder or some other way of collecting these things.
now, you can do big informative post of everything at once, but tbh that tends to be an info overload. do absolutely have a big info post somewhere that will tell ppl all about your thing, but that's not your marketing, that's like, the thing u link in ur marketing as 'learn more about this here'.
the more effective strategy is a bunch of different (but, ideally, thematically/tonally similar or linked) bite-sized things. take a look at your list of interesting highlights and make small posts about them, maybe one per post, maybe two or three if they're small and link up well. but bite sized! something ppl will be able to get the gist of, or at least notice the large print on, when scrolling social media. short text posts. youtube shorts sized video. short audio clips. one or two good pictures at a time. a cool reward on ur kickstarter. little things, not too much info all at once. if you want to showcase something larger—an overarching theme, perhaps, or the diversity of your cast, or something—try to display a snapshot or example of it.
u can also do some marketing-specific editing if u feel like it, to make things shorter and/or more dramatic. give a stronger conclusion to ur teaser than the more lingering scene in canon. do a fun bonus bit where the characters talk to the camera, but let them highlight their personalities when doing so. a short behind the scenes of the process. etc etc.
(in a big corporate marketing campaign here we'd be discussing things like print ads, tv spots, radio, etc, but since we're talking indie i am focusing in on mostly social media posts. altho if u are branching out to paying for advertising spots, that would be a more in depth discussion re: is this visible to your target audience? how does the medium used enhance or detract from your message? what can you highlight more in video/print/audio, so what should you focus on for each of those? etc.)
this is important!! make sure every little thing you're posting has one! 'learn more here' or 'find the book here' or 'support our fundraiser here' or whatever. easy in our internet age to link ppl to where to find either your product or the info page about it—somewhere they can get more info, consume ur product, and/or give you money. dont give them like 6 different links in one post, keep it to 1 usually, maybe 2, so they dont have to open a bunch of tabs just to find the main thing. (it is ok to give the same link multiple times in a post, but make the call to action one Very Visible. big font, or different color, or whatever.)
step 4, which tbh is more like 3c but whatever: involve your audience!
in amongst all the teaser posts, include ways for ppl to join in somehow. people love to feel like they're part of something, and this is also a way to like, manufacture word of mouth advertising. oh god this sounds cynical but it WORKS, this is why you get companies going 'post a picture of yourself at our store' or 'use our hashtag' or whatever. ask people to like... idk, post their favorite line from your show, or tell you what song should be on a character's playlist, or take a photo of where they put the pins from your kickstarter reward. it can be silly, and it doesn't hurt to give them a small creative task either; i have seen successful 'create a character using the game's character creation system and share it', as well as 'draw this character in your style', stuff like that. always ask them to tag you or use a trackable hashtag, both so you can see how many and so u can like, reblog or otherwise interact, bcos the creator interacting with posts (at least ones made with the intent for u to see) encourages ppl.
it can help if u have little a prize to offer, but if that's out of budget then literally just making ppl feel special and/or included can do it. why do u think spotify wrapped is all over the place, ppl want to share about themselves and see what other ppl are doing. astrology for nerds always goes over well lbr; 'take this quiz to see which ya dystopia city youd go to' or 'here are the types of people in each ttrpg class, tag yourself' kind of thing. oh GOD i sound cynical but again it fucking works.
also include ur links to ur stuff on these kinds of posts too, bcos what if someone sees it and doesn't know your product? let them click the link to check it out! always always always make it easy for ppl to find your stuff.
step 5: track, analyze, and modify as needed.
this one's hard, and tbh for like a short one-time kickstarter type of thing may not be relevant. but if you want to keep advertising your thing—or multiple different things over time—you wanna learn to do this, at least a little. get a rough idea of how much traction you have before marketing begins if possible—how many hits, how many reblogs and likes and comments and so on, how much audience interaction, which websites get more hits, how many purchases, how well do hashtags do—and then compare as marketing goes on. do you get more when you post some things than others? is there a website where people are more likely to click? are you finding your target audience in the hashtag, or an unexpected one? and if an unexpected one, what do they like and should you increase it?
see what works and do more of it. see what doesn't work and change it. test more. be flexible. dont do drastic flipflopping changes every week or whatever—defs give it time—but if something's just not working even after months and months, don't be afraid to try something new. maybe u need a different tone to your posts. maybe you need a different website. maybe you need a total rebrand!
this kind of analysis and deciding what to change is HARD and as an indie creator you will not be as effective as a professional, but you can still do some.
and that's about the bare basics of a marketing strategy. and now,
common pitfalls and mistakes.
disclaimer again that like. listen sometimes this works for some ppl. maybe your specific thing can and should be marketed in ways that i find all wrong. maybe you get enough sales this way and that's fine. these r my opinions of issues that ive seen make ppl less inclined to go consume a thing or spend money or whatever.
- putting down your own work. don't do this! just don't! like yeah we see it all the time in fanfic summaries and ok tbh ive done it on my own stuff before, it's hard not to, but i have seen on kickstarter promotions the creator going 'this is my first time doing this so it might not be very good, but...' STOP. be proud and confident in your work! even if you're not, act like you are!! otherwise why would anyone else want it?
- focusing on appeal to pity. in the same vein as the last thing. telling people 'woe is me i have no money' can work on like a mutual aid post, but it's not great when you're selling a product. i worked with an organization that did a big charity fundraiser and tried to sell things by going 'we just can't afford our important charitable work... pls help...' which did. not go well. instead, tell people what they'll get by putting money in! sometimes that is just your product obvs, but like, listing off rewards and cool bonuses is better. and if you dont have actual rewards to give, simple phrasing can work wonders. 'we cant afford to do this unless you give us money' sounds pitiable. 'by donating, you'll be helping us achieve this cool thing!' sounds like your audience is part of the creative process, which ppl love to be, and doesn't sound like you're on the verge of having to give up. people also like giving money to things that they feel will succeed.
- not being clear about what the product actually is. i know trope based marketing is in right now but honestly it is not as effective as telling ppl what the damn thing is about. too often ppl will start out with a list of tropes, genres, creator identities, overarching themes like 'capitalism is bad', etc, and neglect to tell the audience any actual plot information. please please please, somewhere near the top of your info post, give a one or two sentence plot summary that tells us about the actual plot. personally i feel a little condescended to when i am told 'this book is gay and hates capitalism so you'll like it'. let me decide what i like. also frankly let me decide the story's themes when i read or watch or whatever, I don't need spoonfeeding. if you did it good your audience will notice; if you did it bad but told them it'd be good, they'll, uh, notice that too.
- keeping too much information secret. again in the vein of previous point, but different bcos this is usually done to 'prevent spoilers' or whatever. im not saying give away all your big plot twists, but honestly i think a lot of creators are afraid they're giving away more plot in teasers than they are. the audience wants to know what they're getting into! give them the basic plot! give them the interesting out of context snippet of future stuff! it's fine! it gets them interested! it makes them want to know more!
- too many comparisons. listen i know we all wanna be the next big successful thing, and namedropping it with like 'my product is like (successful other thing)' seems like an easy way to catch fans. and SOMETIMES this is an appropriate comparison, particularly for like, fan projects that grew into something big, or for adaptations, or for projects where the main thesis is '(other thing) but with Specific Change'. but once you start putting that on your marketing, as a major marketing point, you run the risk of a lot of people looking at your product and going 'hey that actually doesn't have any of what i liked in (successful thing).' your audience will always be comparing, and lbr, the comparison from fans of the first thing is often biased towards the first thing. they may treat yours like a knockoff or wannabe. they may give it a shot and lose interest quickly.
(like... do list your inspirations somewhere in your creation itself obviously, we gotta give credit. but don't make 'just like (thing)' or even 'like (thing) but better' a main marketing point unless you are REALLY SURE people will not be extra disappointed that it's not like what THEY liked about the first thing. it's ok to market your creation on its own merits.)
- not making enough posts. look just...... u wanna make your marketing visible, ok? more posts is better. post all the time. even if u think it's annoying, keep on postin. reblog old posts occasionally, and certainly if ur interacting with ppl who've interacted with your posts, but tbh new posts, with new bits of content, with tags on for ppl to find, circulating? you want to be showing people so many things!
.......there may be other things but this is all i managed to think of while i wrote this at work, so. here's the thing. pls forgive any typos as i wrote this on my phone at work and dont particularly feel like doing a proofreading of my big ol ramble rn lol.
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