Engagement and Marketing Education Initiative proposal for Game7

Proposals
#1

Engagement and Marketing Education Initiative proposal for Game7

Summary

● Successful game launches need solid business development, marketing, and engagement

● Developers will be more successful with proper business education and support in using current marketing and engagement tools and strategies

I propose we explore pathways for the Game7 Community to kickstart a Marketing support effort for Game7 Community Development Teams.

Introduction

Building an exciting, engaging, and fun game is only one part of a successful game launch. Development teams need an understanding of marketing, social media, and community engagement to get their game into the hands of people who will play it. Currently, there is no process in Game7 to accommodate the marketing and promotional needs of a game development team. Without marketing, promotions, and attention to the strengths and weaknesses of a development team, there is little hope for a successful launch.

The wider ecosystem comparison

Any successful game project needs a solid foundation of marketing, promotions, and social media knowledge to promote the game properly. There are not many small development shops with marketing teams or business professionals on staff, and they generally do not spend time on creating a promotional platform to promote the game.

Typically these are functions a publisher would help with or provide completely in the web2/gaming/mobile gaming space.

Initial Proposal

Through education and direct interaction, I propose to provide message development, community engagement, marketing, and promotional support to all Game7 grant recipients and other Game7 community members. Each dev team will get dedicated time to discuss ways to build out their marketing efforts, understand how to promote effectively, and gauge the ROI of such efforts.

Proposed Process

Primary Initiative
1. Regular Bi-weekly sessions

a. We will have regular discord rooms for educational purposes to answer questions, advise teams on how to promote their games and projects, and basic business planning around marketing efforts.

B. Each session will have a specific topic to start, such as social media marketing, collaborations, content planning, marketing asset creation, case study of a recent launch or market entry, twitter spaces, paid campaign strategies, messaging, A/B testing, etc.

C. Guest speakers may be invited where appropriate (like a rockstar Discord mod during the Discord session)

D. Sessions will be designed to tackle known marketing problems, one per session. Each session will start with a single question, which will be answered by participants to get an understanding of their knowledge of the topic and goals related to the topic. We will then discuss ways to understand the question better, ways to address it, and provide potential starting points for each participant to use in their respective business. This conversational method has been shown to not only increase participation, but also increase understanding and application of concepts and ideas discussed in the session.
Topics for the first two sessions may be “Identifying your target audience” and “How to effectively create and promote your brand”.

E. Followup sessions regarding a single topic are possible if the participants deem it of sufficient value to discuss further.

2. Open Town Hall - Regular hour-long sessions to assist in marketing, brainstorming, or other business-related questions from the community at large. Participants can sign up (or step up) for a live informal review of their marketing presence and suggestions. They could also do a “practice pitch” and get feedback. These can be weekly / bi-weekly as needed, with changes made as the community provides feedback.

3. Twitter Spaces - We can run live Twitter Spaces for Game7 teams to pitch their games to players where we can interview the dev team and optionally invite speakers up (AMA). This will also give Game7 more community exposure. These will be done as often as works for the community, with weekly being a common cadence for larger spaces.

Secondary Initiatives

1. Marketing

a. We will work with the development team to co-develop/review the marketing plans for their games, suggest a content creation/distribution strategy, and how to promote their projects using their own socials and other promotional tools

b. Show the developer team how to generate marketing assets from their existing collateral.

2. Engagement development

a. We will educate Game7 development teams how to use available promotional tools to promote their games and build community effectively

3. Supporter Rewards

a. We will show developers how to reward game players and supporters for their promotional activities.

Trial Period

Suggest a trial period of 60 days. This should allow time for several sessions and all of the Primary Initiatives to be explored with teams.

Seeking feedback and ideas from the community

-Which particular topic(s) interests you in example topics for the bi-weekly session list?

-Do you see something missing that you have special interest in?

-What are some guests you would like to see featured?

-How should we call these bi-weekly calls & Open Town Halls to clarify that they are specific to marketing/community engagement learnings?

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#2

KT! A big fan of this idea. Added some thoughts and feedback below where I could since I’m out of my element here with “Marketing.”

Yes! Education on the established best practices in web2 and how these efforts are being adapted/reimagined in web3 was a big topic among folks at GDC this year. People are hungry for more resources to learn about this, and what tools are available / they should be thinking about.

I like the approach of a topic to focus the discussion each week. Would you seed each discussion with pre-prepared content? For example, on social media marketing you might spend time evaluating the approach of project x, and spend the first 10-15 minutes of the call presenting an analysis that provides a framework to continue the discussion around project x approach, or to discuss other projects/questions from participants on that topic?

Open hours - web3 marketing support - to discuss a wider-range of topics is great, so long as it doesn’t detract from the primary sessions. Don’t get spread too thin!

As I read through these, it feels like it would be great to identify 1-3 dev teams to potentially partner with for this trial. Being able to evaluate the results of implementing feedback from each topic in the trial end-to-end over 2 months on a single title could be very powerful. I think it also saves a lot of effort, since the group only needs to get the project context once, and can spend the remainder focusing on these efforts vs. getting up to speed on numerous projects and communities. It wouldn’t preclude evaluating additional titles for single/multiple topics, but provides a great baseline comparison for further content generated from this initiative.

User Acquisition in web3!

Legendary Heroes Unchained

Web3 Marketing Masterclass (kilts optional ;-))

3 Likes
#3

Great proposal KT, looking forward to seeing it coming to life!

-Which particular topic(s) interests you in example topics for the bi-weekly session list?

UA, content, influencers, brand \ community

-Do you see something missing that you have special interest in?

I think projects \ leaders who participate should agree in advanced to share their progression so we can utilize the data for reports \ case studies who will benefit a greater audience.

-What are some guests you would like to see featured?

Brand \ Community - Yuga, Azuki
Influencers - Brycent
Content - BORED
UA - ?

-How should we call these bi-weekly calls & Open Town Halls to clarify that they are specific to marketing/community engagement learnings?

Marketing Monday

5 Likes
#4

Great calls on the guest suggestions… and the alliteration :slight_smile:

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#5

Great proposal and much needed!

It’s sad the number of games that have not succeeded not because their game wasn’t great, but because they didn’t have an effective marketing/engagement plan or the budget planned to support it properly.

One thing I wonder is around the scalability. One person to support potentially the number of games from the G7 community could be a lot. What about having a small “council” from the community that can assist for these calls/advising? That way if someone is sick, as more games get involved, etc. stuff doesn’t have to get rescheduled or potentially backed up.

A great output of this, too, could be those that participate agree to share (anonymized if needed) the results of their efforts. This could then benefit the G7 community at large, including games that may come in late and didn’t get to sit in on some of the town halls, etc.

The three topics I hear most:

  1. How to get more users (user acquisition)
  2. How to keep users active (retention and engagement)
  3. NFT usage

It may not seem marketing related, but #3 in terms of free NFT vs. not, building whitelists to generate excitement, etc. becomes quite important to both the game economy and its marketing.

5 Likes
#6

thank you!

regarding scalability, this is just the start. No one succeeds without finding new people to play the game. I hope we will be able to bring in more people who can help expand this effort as it grows. Almost every successful game has a massive marketing / PR effort as well as community building effort, and my goal is to kickstart that effort.

3 Likes
#7

thank you!

To begin we will be seeding the discussion and see where it takes us, as long as it is on-topic. I want to be sure those in the call understand the subject matter, so it may take a left turn or two in the discussion in an effort to increase understanding. I want to be sure anything presented is done at a level that the most people can understand and put to use.

as for partners, I agree. Hopefully a few projects will start from the beginning to put what they learn to use. The true test of effectiveness is how the information is implemented and succeeds.

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#8

I think that’s a sensible approach!

Could you share a bit more about your background with the community and your motivations to lead an initiative here?

Thanks!

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#9

Sure!
The cornerstone of this all was becoming an Eagle scout, which is how I know Dave.

I graduated college with an undergrad in business ( marketing ) and got my MBA a few years later. My first real marketing and sales position was 3 years with budweiser on the special events and contemporary marketing teams. Then I spent about 15 or so years working Corporate IT at HP and ONEOK ( a natural gas company in the midwest US ). While there I ran my own small marketing / web design company which eventually grew into founding one of the biggest pre-facebook Kilt communities in the world. This community has since migrated to Facebook groups and still exists today some 15 years later. After the IT jobs I spent 4 years working for a local marketing / business development shop doing workshops with small businesses very similar to what is proposed above, but running 8 hour marathon sessions addressing all their business concerns, with a focus on growth and profitability. Immediately before I joined Dave in web3 I ran my own chocolate making company which was doing very nicely until Covid forced me to close up shop.

For the past 2 years I’ve been working with Dave to build tools and processes to help creators and builders succeed. I’ve spent countless hours on twitter spaces, discord rooms, and calls with creators and devs helping them better understand how to market their business and projects to communities, brainstorm resolutions for whatever problems. Most recently I’ve been hosting a weekly show on twitter diving into the intricacies of the Business of NFTs.

While doing all that, I spend a week every year since the late 80’s taking a 7th grade of around 100-140 kids on a week-long wilderness survival trip in the middle of the mountains, as well as work with various other youth organizations, including Scouting. These have helped me develop an aptitude for explaining most any topic to people who do not have any prior knowledge of that topic in a way they understand and can apply immediately.

I’m motivated here because, as noted in the proposal, there are few small dev teams who have marketing/PR/community people, and fewer still who’s developers have significant experience in those fields. I believe the time of “If you build it, they will come” is over, and every development team can use some help developing a strong community to support their project.

If there any other questions, please ask!

5 Likes
#10

Fully agreed on your assessment of the problem, and I really appreciate the creative approach to make it a “living” initiative with deep engagement among the community. Three major thoughts come to mind after reading:

  1. Is this a grant? How much will it cost Game7 to run? How will the funds be spent? I wonder if grants should get more public scrutiny. I haven’t done that with my grants yet, but would be happy to do so. This is less of a criticism to @KT_the_Kiltman, but rather a general question about how we should be using this forum and what level of transparency belongs here.

  2. I worry the current proposal risks a spinning-in-circles scenario, a la: Web3 game devs have had trouble with marketing, so let’s get lots of web3 game devs together to talk about marketing. The note about guest speakers feels like it could address this somewhat. I would emphasize this more. For instance, is there a shortlist of speakers, Town Hall judges/experts, or profiles of people who should be invited? For events without expert speakers, how will we ensure the conversation results in useful discussion and takeaways?

  3. I don’t really see where the education bit is. Is there a curriculum or playbook that comes out of this? A series of educational videos or documents? Taking the ideas that arise from loose forums like Twitter Spaces and Town Halls and distilling those ideas into actionable outputs for blockchain game devs might help drive concrete results. Developing such artifacts would have the added benefit of allowing future Game7 community members to learn from this initiative.

Finally, I want to emphasize how important this topic is and how I appreciate this proposal (despite my critical-but-hopefully-thought-provoking questions). I believe after addressing the feedback in this thread, this effort can be a great contribution to Game7. Thanks, @KT_the_Kiltman!

6 Likes
#11

Thanks for the feedback.
I#1 - I’ve asked G7 for a better answer to that.
#2 - I am not a game dev. I am a marketing/business professional who has run this kind of process many times over the past 20 years, and currently run a weekly show on these topics. Directing these discussions is what I do.
#3 This entire process is educational. I have learned over the past 20+ years that the best education method on new topics is a guided conversation about the basic information and how it is applied to the people in the discussion. I don’t summarize spaces or conversations as it is extremely time consuming to create such material, the application of these conversations is different for each team, and they are usually recorded to be revisited at any time. Additionally, the web3 space is extremely fluid, and the industry is changing far faster than such materials can be generated and distributed effectively.

While the ideas and theories used as the core are easily found online right now, the application of these concepts is different for each team. These application methods are not plug and play. Understanding how to apply those ideas and teaching our individual dev teams to implement them does not currently exist outside a consultancy.

3 Likes
#12

Thanks for putting this together @KT_the_Kiltman! I think you’re onto something great here! I agree that this is an endeavor through which the game devs in the community can all level up the knowledge of what it takes to get a Web3 game in front of players.

The one point that jumps out to me is that while we have a plethora of game studios of all sizes in the community, this endeavor could do more to truly capture their knowledge, thereby decentralizing it to the community! The culmination of user acquisition and marketing knowledge in the community will always be greater than that of a single mind.

While this initiative hits the right spots, I would like to see a slightly trimmed-down version of this broad proposal be considered. At least to start with.

The Open Town Hall, or Marketing Monday, as @Junior named it, stands out to me as it truly captures the joint talent present here… Great, varied guests will make sure that the content discussed on these calls is not biased and that it truly captures the state of the industry. Or at least what community members are seeing regarding their own marketing experiences.

If we expand on the parts of the proposal where the joint community talent is engaged, similarly to what @DrSnaggles proposed (council of marketers…), this could be very impactful!

I see reporting as an important facet of this initiative, as not everyone has time to be on calls — this holds doubly true for builders! One option is to follow up with games that have tried to execute upon the knowledge shared on these calls and package it all into monthly community reports.

To sum up my thoughts:
a) Open Town Hall with a varied list of community guests with extensive marketing knowledge. As mentioned, practice pitch sessions and case studies of market entry, paid campaigns, messaging, and A/B testing are all relevant avenues of discussion here. This initiative will likely land on the radar of other folks who might want to contribute to it. It might be worth switching it up occasionally by adding other co-hosts or having someone else host. This could free up some time on @KT_the’s plate.
b) Over time, a committee can be formed — a coalition of Web3 Gaming Marketers present in the G7 Community.
c) Reports! Some general reports that provide an overview of the outcomes/knowledge captured from these sessions.

Based on the initial engagement, all else could be added on top later. Curious as to what the community thinks here! And very interested in seeing further engagement on this proposal!

2 Likes
#13

Thanks for sharing the proposals @KT_the_Kiltman.

As a game developer seeking advice, my hope is to receive feedback from industry experts who have accomplished some level of success. Therefore, while I believe this initiative could be valuable, unless we have proven experts participating and providing advice, I could not trust a group of individuals who haven’t demonstrated their ability to market their game in web3 before.

My suggestion would be to repurpose the initiative to start with three roundtables deep diving very specific topics and bringing experts to discuss them. In my opinion, the low hanging fruit for all developers today is UA, so let’s break down different UA strategies and get really deep into the best practices and failed stories for each.

  1. The use of Airdrops, WL, etc.
  2. The use of Twitter and communities collaborations.
  3. Influencer marketing

Let’s bring 3-4 experts on each topic from existing & live web3 games who are constantly experimenting with UA and hear real stories.

I am willing to support this initiative if that’s the direction we’re heading.

Pontential games to invite:

  • Pirate Nation
  • Yuga Labs
  • Mini Royal: Faraway
  • CryptoUnicorns
  • GAMEE
  • Axie
  • Gods Unchained
  • Sandbox
  • DeFi Kingdoms
  • Aavegotchi
  • Sunflower Land
  • Decentral Games
  • Oath of Peak
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#14

‘‘social media marketing, collaborations, content planning, marketing asset creation, a case study of a recent launch or market entry, Twitter spaces, paid campaign strategies, messaging, A/B testing, etc’’
These for sure but I would also add a topic or a network session about how to find people with whom to execute all the above mentioned.

I believe a weekly session is better, thus people are more accountable and the iteration process is quicker, which is essential for the execution and finding the way that is working for their specific game.

idk, but I believe it should be a specific name: Community farming/ Community funnel framework/ Community engagement academy … the idea is to understand directly what is about.

I believe this is a really good idea :orange_heart:

2 Likes
#15

Great proposal and I agree with you on the need for helping projects market games and I think G7 is a perfect platform to help facilitate that. My only thoughts was to take this proposal one step farther and find a way to make this education sustainable. Perhaps an end goal to have this education be automated through our Summons dapp ( create quests that promote our community to properly execute these initiatives) and or a detailed outline of this proposal in the form of an ‘owners manual’ so that the G7 community as a whole could continue this indefinitely if proven effective.

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