Oprogramowanie Inc. Beginner’s Marketing Guide and Tips

Marketing Basics

Marketing tasks can be separated into groups:

– Pre-marketing

– Post-marketing

– Oferty (from the Receptionist)

Since marketing is not that well explained, what you must first know is that each difficulty setting has its own period for Marketing. It’s called the “Marketing boost window before release” and here is a list per difficulty

– Easy 2y 8m

– Medium 2y

– Hard 2y

– Impossible 1y 4m

Więc, when you announce first your new software, you will have that “marketing window” on diff you choose. Również, the important thing that is rarely mentioned is “Marketing recognition”, which is the most important thing to know about Marketing mechanics.

Marketing Recognition

Marketing recognition is a value that represents the general visibility and popularity of your software. It can be seen when you hover over Fans on top of the screen – a new dropdown list will be displayed giving you insight into how much each type of product genre is recognized.

Every new IP starts with a Marketing recognition 0 (zero) wartość. If the first release has good reviews it will start acquiring recognition. This is a slow process and it will take time for any IP to build good MR – co najmniej 4/6 kiery. Również, the BIG thing, your sales are affected directly by your marketing recognition, and every difficulty will put more and more emphasis on it. This can be also seen on the new game start window when you click on ? button next to difficulty.

To sum it up so far, the higher the difficulty, you will have the smaller period for effective marketing, and it will take longer to build marketing recognition for each new IP.

The only way to build strong recognition is by releasing sequels that are at least Great/Inspiring, and are in the time frame of 2-4 between sequels.

My way: everything is released after 3 lata, except computer OS that can easily last full 4 years with a strong active user base

How to market

You can always debate how much marketing teams are needed, and my attitude is – the less is better. Since you can only effect marketing early on new IP release, and it takes time to high marketing recognition, do not worry did you marketed enough your new project?

Steps to market:

1. Announce date

2. Release press release in the Design phase

3. Release press release in the Development phase

4. Do Press build

5. Uwolnienie

It seems that the marketing mechanic in-game was reworked, so there are no exact numbers, but this is what I found is the optimal list how to effectively market. Why am I doing it this way ?

The press release states it should be used not often since each new Press release will have lesser effect – less marketing boost. Earlier it was possible to spam video press releases and shoot followers into sky, however it is fixed now.

Wskazówka: Press release in Alpha is treated same as Beta, so releasing one in each phase will have negative effects after later. So when reaching beta, Press build is done, which will actually give you the biggest boost to followers – same like a demo or showcase to the press.

My way: I do both press releases with video, however I release mine’s first when Design enters last iteration, and second when get reviews and reiterate design to get those 10/10 oceny.

PRO-TIP:

You can start on Design phase, and on first press release without announcing. When design reaches 4th iteration, do announcement for 15 miesiąc, and release Press. That way you will have time to do another Press release during development, review, press build and beta fixing.

If you finish earlier, you can release it also (don’t forget to print/order copies), there is NO penalty for releasing earlier than announced !

Advanced Marketing and Subsidiary

In my last run, I’ve tested no-marketing team setup, where I would outsource marketing until I start to build my OS, which is my first marketing project.

Earlier I was hiring 2 teams of 10 marketeers – four 3*, five 2*, one leader/marketing Soc+HR

However with this new strategy, I will not hire any marketing team.

Subsidiary marketing

I acquire a subsidiary that is cheapest – near bankrupt and having low creativity Lead designer, and remove to be autonomous. It will be in charge for every single marketing task for each new release.

Two big things to know:

Subsidiaries will continue to earn money after you acquire them, because they still have some revenue incoming from it’s releases. Jednakże, it will soon to start to be money sink, so this strategy is for advanced players that have over 200m $ and can afford to buy AI company and give it 50m $ of starting capital.

Drugi – if you are running 2 shifts like myself, the Subsidiary work only regular working time, so it can handle tasks during day, but don’t expect them to be as productive as your company.

Więc, my new Subsidiary will get Hyping, Press-releases and Post-marketing tasks for each new release. I was testing it to see how many tasks can handle, and I think it’s like 30 easily. Also if you assign it over 20 zadania, it will actually stop to be money sink, and be float-able with maybe -1m $ per year.

Advice here: there is no need to market software indefinitely, since you want your sequel to sell as well as previous one – i więcej, so you need to stop post-marketing for any release when the sequel arrives.

WAŻNY !

The only downside of having no-marketing teams is that you must do manual development of every project, and you can’t use Project management for developing, since you can’t assign Subsidiary in PM window.

Post marketing and Deals

Marketing deals acquired from receptionist tend to be really long, and would require high number teams, so my advice is to do better support deals, since it is almost same amount of money, but one team of 10 supporter 1* can actually support a deal, however marketing team of 10 marketeers 1* are going to be late with work.

If you decide to do marketing deals as complementary to your pre-marketing tasks, do not take on without at least eight 2* and two 3* marketing skill employees.

Post-marketing

After releasing software, you should assign team to do the post-marketing task. It will ensure that your release stay (or reach) Unnavoidable, and keep it that way as far as it takes.

I have never played with budgets, so I leave them at infinite – so each month they will receive max boost. However if you are running tight ship, then see what budget will allow you to stay Unnavoidable month after month

Ponownie, you can use my strategy of Subsidiary marketing, and assign each new release’s post marketing task to it. I can vouch it will always cover even 12 simultaneous tasks.

Comment bellow if you disagree or have a better way of marketing.

Dzięki!