david+padron

Wanting to take advantage of E3 being in town, I ran two marketing experiments with Atom Zombie Smasher. First, a printed flyer with some art, details about the game and a free Steam key. The concept behind the flyer was to take advantage of the media and dev presence to gain some exposure for the game. Second, I turned the creation process of the flyer (in the form of a time lapse video) into a giveaway promotion. The aim was get some interest in the game and engage our community. I did this by stealthily embedding steam keys into the youtube annotations on the video itself. This made the promotion itself a game which I would provide clues to via facebook & twitter.

How'd it go overall?
The flyer wasn't very successful. I had hoped to gain some extra write-ups or mentions and while we did get featured on the HAWPcast, we didn't get any other plugs or mentions via E3. The second part was the giveaway which, I would deem a minor success. It managed to improve sales impressions, social network adoptions and engaged our fans.

Things that worked well:

• We saw a measurable improvement in sales, social, etc. metrics, most likely attributable to the video promotion
• Commenters praised the video giveaway for it's cleverness. Personal victory there
• The guys from HAWP named their podcast episode after us and hyped Atom Zombie Smasher on air
• Got flyers in the hands of several VIPs

Things that didn't work so well:

• I didn't plan out my show floor pitch or make a list of who to target in advance. Because I didn't have a plan, I didn't have a schedule and did not hand out as many fliers as I would have liked.
• Not many gaming sites picked up our giveaway video. E3 announcements are most likely to blame but, I could have given the media more notice about the promotion.
• While clever, the video giveaway was anti-viral. There was no incentive to share the video so people just kept it to themselves.
• We didn't receive any big plugs, write-ups or mentions as a result of the fliers

By the numbers:

• $130 Dollars (Cost for fliers)
• 15% of fliers delivered
• 0 Press inquiries
• <1,500 YouTube Views
• 2% Increase in Facebook Likes, 100% improvement in Facebook interactions
• 5% Increase in Twitter Followers
• 0% Increase in web traffic (not surprising, I directed people to our social pages)
• 5% Increase in sales impressions

Takeaway:
In generaI, think it's fair to say that E3 has a low marketing value for a indies unless you have free booth space. That being said, I feel as though E3 indie marketing can be successful with the right approach(?). Everyone at E3 is hoping to be surprised and I think indies are uniquely positioned to do that.

The video promotion was clever, cost us nothing and ended up benefiting us much more than our physical presence at E3. I think the design of the promotion could be improved but that overall it was a good concept. The biggest mistake in executing the promotion was probably tying it to E3. I probably should have started the promotion before E3 to put some space between us and the big news.