I try to do marketing

Right now FLIES is 33% off on Steam!

I timed this week-long sale (which is also happening on Itch but I know y'all are cowards who won't buy it there) to align with two experimental marketing events. So here's some juicy background info about marketing.

I wanted to get the word out to a large number of people who would be more likely to occupy the small, teeny tiny niche of humans who would be willing to pay for the experience I've created. I've never spent money on advertising before and I wanted to give it a shot, but I am extremely broke. So I opened my ears to opportunities where I could advertise with some of the weird, independent creators that I listen to/follow, who are queer and likely to want to support my project by cutting affordable deals.

I was listening to the Gender Reveal Podcast hosted by Tuck Woodstock, and noticed that every episode not only has trans guests talking for a trans audience--My main character is trans & a lot of the VN is about that--the episodes also feature Theymail messages, which are little messages submitted by audience members sharing about opportunities, small businesses, events etc. that they want to promote. I thought, hey, I should write a Theymail message! This was back in December right after release. It turns out I was way behind on the podcast and didn't realize they were out of season, so my message wouldn't go out until after the new season started. Well now it has, and my message was released to the Gender Reveal audience yesterday in this episode.

Tonight I went and listened to hear the message read. It happens a few minutes in. Driving at night to get dinner and feeling kind of groggy, hearing the words I wrote read out, I was able to hear them in a weird, detached mood, and ask myself, Did I effectively capture FLIES FLIES FLIES? If I had never heard of it, would this message entice me to look it up? And I honestly don't know. Word limits are hard. Describing anything is hard. Marketing is hard. I guess let's wait for the numbers to show!

The other promotion came about by sending a Steam code to an Instagram content creator, Leanne Yau who runs Polyphilia Blog which I support on Patreon. I think reaching out to them via Patreon, as a patron, must have cut through the barrier that happens when trying to get games journalists who've never heard of you to try to write about your projects. I can definitely say that if one of my Patreon supporters messaged me saying they had made something cool, I would be inclined to return the favor by at least reading the message and whatnot. It'd actually be really cool to hear.

Anyways, I sent them some Steam codes because they had streamed some games and VNs on Twitch and I thought maybe they would be interested in streaming FLIES. They told me they weren't streaming anymore at the moment but that they would be open to collaborating on a Steam key giveaway for their followers. I made some slides, which they combined and cleaned up to optimize for social media attention spans, and we ran the giveaway yesterday. Folks who won Steam codes got this message:

Folks who didn't win codes got this message:

That was Leanne's idea, to send the link to folks who don't get chosen, and that way you get impressions from everyone who signs up for the giveaway, not just the small number who you end up sending codes too.

Anyway. I hate marketing, and coordinating just these 2 things to happen, plus the steam sale to line up with them, is just about all I have the energy for. (I've also been sending out codes to journalists etc. trying to get coverage but nothing has come of that.) So I'm gonna call this the end of phase 1 of marketing, and put my attention solely on finishing episode 3. Which is gonna be awesome.

I'll update later with whether any of this pays off!