There is marketing strategy and it’s not this black box that’s mysterious or

something that requires millions upon millions of dollars in the big publishing team. It’s like no, it’s strategy and execution. It’s marketing

your game. Today I’m joined by a former EA and Warner Brothers marketer who’s now helping Indiana Studios market smarter

without blowing their budget. You need to be allocating more like 30 to 50% of your budget to marketing

because you need to cut through all the noise that’s out there. There’s too much competition in today’s market. We talk

about why most devs treat marketing like a checkbox and how a $1,000 paid ad test deliver a 5.3x return and how you can do

the same. UA agencies would see that data and tell clients just go all in. If you’re

getting those types of returns, nobrainer, spin, spin, spin, spin, spin.

Wrong. From someone who’s taken AAA marketing lessons and made them work for small indie studios, this episode’s

guest and founder of Skillree Marketing, John Hansen.

John, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. Thanks for coming. Reason we’re here is

saw your post on LinkedIn and I was like that is interesting and then I saw it again and again and I was like oh other

people find this interesting and I was like I need to talk to this person and now here we are. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It’s been a wild ride.

Yeah. As a lot has happened the last week. So I’ll bring people back to speed. So John just founded Skillree

Marketing. So boutique growth and consultancy for indie and doublea studios and he’s have 12 years in AAA

publishing at EA and Warner Brothers games and now he’s in his words left the corporate grind to help smaller teams.

So I’m really looking forward to this conversation and what I want to first start with is why did you start posted

on LinkedIn and kind of why did you leave like what’s happened? I started to look around to see what I

was going to do after WB. Job market not that great. Uh, and I live in the country out here in Florida. So, I

needed to find a remote role. Um, interviewed a place, went through a month and a half and didn’t get it of

interviews and just really didn’t feel energized by the thought of just going to another place. So, I really thought

and spent some time to reflect and realized there was a gap in the market of, oh, there’s a bunch of indie games.

and your games are doing well, but there’s not great marketing support out there. So, uh, I said, “Well, there’s

got I had the there’s got to be a better way moment.” Um, so I started

researching of, okay, like what’s what’s out there? What’s going on? And I

decided I was going to try this initially like as a small consultancy. Had to build a B2B strategy because I

work at WB. WB doesn’t want me doing side work. So I had to be kind of

stealth mode about it and did research. Never done B2B marketing before uh and

found that I could do thought leadership right through LinkedIn, Reddit, Discord.

So I started posting and engaging on LinkedIn, Reddit, Discord. Uh and it’s

where I got my first three clients, right? So I started getting some work and my post on LinkedIn um I was

testing, iterating as a good marketer would do. some posts would be, you know, okay, some posts would die. Uh, and one

day I was with my wife. She mentioned Expedition 33 that came out. She said, “Oh, well, you could have helped them.

They didn’t have any marketing.” Of course, I laughed. I’m of course they had marketing, right? They sold a million copies in 24 hours. Like, of

course they had marketing, right? But it made me think. I’m like, you know, she’s not alone, right? Like the she’s a big

gamer. She follows the the industry. And um you know, I’m sure that there there are other people that had that same

feeling of, oh well, the game was just great, right? So the game is amazing. It sold itself. It didn’t need any marketing at all. Right? So I did some

research and I and I pinpointed, oh yeah, Expedition did d it did all these

things. Great. Made a post about it and it did well, right? It was actually really my one of my better performing

posts. Um but nothing incredible. But then about a week after I posted it, it

started getting the algorithm started picking up and it started getting traction on like a Sunday. I just started getting a bunch of likes. I’m

like, “What? I posted this. What’s going on?” But something clicked. I’m like, “Oh, algorithm says this is good

content.” So, I took the same idea and I had this conversation with uh you know, one of

the per one of the people I’ve been working with uh who gives me the perspective of devs and he said, “Man, everyone wants to be the next Batro.

They want to be the next Batro. How do we be the next Batro? That’s what all devs care about. They want to be the next like, “Oh, oh yeah, okay. I’m going

to make the same style post about Batro.” And I did the same thing. I did the research and I said, “Oh, yeah.

Battro did d they did all this stuff, right? They did paid UA. They did the whole they had the whole song and dance,

right? Full marketing funnel.” And I made that post and it blew up, right? It

blew up uh all in. I had 200,000 organic impressions on that post

and I was one of them. I was the reason it came on my feed and that’s why we’re chatting today. Yeah. And in that moment I go I went,

“Oh, I hit a gold mine.” And and I’m like, “Okay, let me like here are other

games that I know that people have similar, you know, misconceptions about marketing. Like, okay, I’m going to do

Vampire Survivors. I’m going to do Dredge. I’m going to do Stray.” And it was just like hit after hit after hit.

Like people loved it. They loved it. Um, and it showed the industry, yes, like

there is marketing strategy and it’s not this black box that’s mysterious. It’s

not this unattainable thing or something that requires millions upon millions of dollars in a big publishing team. It’s

like, no, it’s strategy and execution. It’s marketing your game. Exactly. So, you started posting and

then you’ve gone solo. So before we get into kind of biggest misconceptions about marketing cuz I want to dig in

there. What was the reason? Um you wanted to I guess you mentioned you were

looking for something else but like was something pulling you there? Was something pushing you there? Like what

why now? Well, I got sober. I quit drinking and it gave me some clarity. I had some time

off to reflect. uh you know, I took a short leave from work at WB and I said,

you know what, like I’ve been I’ve been holding myself back. It’s it’s time for something else. And I looked at other

jobs and it just didn’t excite me. And I thought, you know, I think I’m going to do something on my own. In in tandem, a

good friend of mine that I’ve been working very closely with for years at Warner Brothers, Nate, his contract was

running up and they can only extend a contract so so many times in the state of California. So, uh, his contract was

coming up and they weren’t able to renew him and I was talking to him about the job search and trying to help give him

some guidance. I had some interview coaching before and it just he felt the same. He just, you know, got some

interviews and just what was wasn’t getting the role and just was really deflated. And um, you know, initially I

was going to do it by myself. I’m like, Nate, like let’s partner up. Let’s let’s try this together. And we did. And we

realized like, oh, like this is like I don’t want to do it by myself. It’s going to be much better if we have a team. And then like a month later,

Warner Brothers decided it would be a great idea to lay off all the creative services. So I took the very best artist

that I’ve been working with for years, who Warner Brothers gave us severance to, and I said, “Hey, want to come work

with us? We we could use some creative help.” And she said, “Fantastic. Yes, please. I I would love to work with you.

And so it went from just me to now like a fractional part of Warner Brothers

Publishing, right? Like she made the user acquisition, marketing art for

Hubert’s Legacy, the number one selling game in the world, right? Like we know what good looks like. We know she knows

how to make creative. She can crank it, right? She’s incredibly talented. Um but the market’s tough out there. So let’s

let’s do it, right? So that’s the path we’ve gone down to. And now it’s like, oh yeah, like there’s so much, oh my

gosh, there’s so much need out there that we’re going to have to grow. We’re going to continue growing. We’re not

going to be huge. We’re still we’re going to stay pretty lean team, but um there’s more work than we could really

handle at the moment. So yeah, it’s exciting times. 100%. And I had the same feeling when I

was when I also coached some people who’ve done the same like they’ve been in a career a long long time, but then

the job openings aren’t there. Then they go solo and they get like three or four fractional jobs and there’s so much like

you said the word there’s the need is there. I think it’s just the logistics of helping that need in the current

system leads to like your friend who was an expert and then the fact that he got deflated after a job search just doesn’t

really make sense like goes to a point where you just need to kind of go solo. So yeah, I’m just really excited to have

witnessed the start and grab you, you know, in week two. Yes. Yes. Yes. And I’m excited to be here.

All righty. So, you’ve broken down these kind of really high performing games. I

want to ask you from the conversation you’re having, what’s the biggest misconception about game marketing right

now? Uh, the biggest misconception about marketing right now is that there

there’s probably like three things that I can think of. One is that it’s too

expensive. They think that they need to go to publisher for this reason that marketing and validating your game is

just completely out of reach for most indies. The second thing is they’ll view

marketing as a checkbox. They’ll say, “Yeah, we need to market. We need to

market our game, so let’s do uh influencer marketing.” Okay, check.

Done. Right. Um, and then the third is like they don’t think through because of that they don’t think through what a

real fullfunnel marketing strategy looks like. And the challenge from that is in

the industry right now, especially in the indie space, who do you have to go to? There’s not much. There’s Chris

Aowski, how to how to market your game. He has free services and workshops, okay? And you can do it yourself. There

are one-off consultants that will tell you what to do, but won’t actually do

the work. And then you have shops that specialize in like influencer marketing or PR, but they’ll gladly take your

money, but they neglect the other elements and strategies that go into

marketing your game effectively. So, let’s take those three. These are

great. So, the first one, it being more expensive than they expect. So what are they expecting and what’s the reality

when it comes to like budgeting out budgeting out for marketing? So some of them have it wrong in the

first place. I just saw a studio today that allocated more money of their 100%

pie. They allocated 9% of their budget to marketing. Why is that a problem?

It’s a problem because most businesses, which if you’re making a game, it is a

business, you need to be allocating more like 30 to 50% of your budget to

marketing. Why? Because you need to cut through all the noise that’s out there.

There’s too much competition in today’s market. Just not just video games, just everything else. Too much competition.

Netflix, sports, you name it. Social media, Tik Tok, yada yada yada yada. Too much competition. got to cut through it.

So, let’s say I’m a developer and I understand 30 40% it’s for marketing.

Then I’m like, okay, what am I going to be spending on? Because if I role play here, like I’m my head there’s like a

bullet point list of like 10 different ways to market my game. And it’s just that’s a lot of mental energy. Should I

do all of them a little bit? Should I double down on a couple? How do I figure that out? Do I just trust an agency? Because you raised a good point like if

there’s an agency who only do influencer marketing naturally they’re going to try potentially

say hey you need influencers because that’s what we do when potentially there was another strategy that they could be

using. So how do I as a developer figure that out like where should my marketing dollars go?

Yeah. So it’s a great question. So the truth is I’ll ask these I’ll ask studios when should you start marketing your

game right because they don’t know when to start marketing your game. When should you be thinking about marketing? And I tell them the answer is before you

write a single line of code, you should be researching your market, right? You

got to understand your market. What first of all with your business, there’s a product. Is there a need for it?

Right? Is that are there a a thousand other games that you’re trying to make that are coming out at the same time?

What what is your audience and your personas? Like where where are they? What do they say? Where do they live? Um

are they on Reddit? Are they on Discord? Are they on Tik Tok? Are they on none of those channels? Are they um cozy gamers

spend a lot of time in Facebook groups? Right? And then what are the type of things that resonate with them? You

should be thinking through market research first and foremost because that will guide what you need to do from

there and you can then with that information determine how can you use

your very precious very precious marketing budget because as I said 30 to 50% sure a as part of like the whole

marketing campaign but if you’re just trying to start out and build momentum and validate your game to investors

publishers or if If you’re trying to self-publish, then you need to get some level of

momentum, right? And you don’t need a big big budget. You don’t need to spend a ton of money at that. You can start

very small and in a very simple way. All righty. How do I do that market research? Should I just be googling

this? Do you guys use any tools? Should I do it myself? Should I just get someone to help me market research? So,

in the past, what folks will do, what studios will do is they’ll hire market

research firms and pay 15, $20,000,

and it’ll take a month, two months, you know, however long, and you’ll get all these charts and you’ll get all this

data, and you’ll look at it and go, “Okay, what? I don’t know what to do.” But in

today’s world, guess what? There are things like, okay, I’m going to say a very controversial thing. So,

disclaimer, there’s something called AI, okay, that’s out there today. Devs and

studios when it comes to marketing, they that frightens them. But the truth is

with deep research tools that are available today with some simple prompts, you can unlock and discover

exactly where your audience is. the LinkedIn strategy. I told you about that B2B strategy. I’ve never done B2B. What

did I do? First thing I did market research using deep research. Where’s

the audience? What’s their pain points? What do they need? What resonates with them? What turns them off? Right? Same

thing with the game, right? Where are they? What what what’s authentic to them? What what are they looking for?

Right? Are they are they hungry for a specific type of game? All that stuff is

is readily available. Uh there’s Perplexity, there’s Gemini, there’s Chad GBT that

have free tiers. If you really don’t have money, you can do it for free, right? So there are tools available to

start and to give you a pretty good starting position where you’re 80 90% of

the way there. Now for us, we take it to 100 because we know the questions to

ask, right? the paintbrush is only as good as the painter. So, you know, as a

experienced marketers, we know a lot of the questions to ask and a lot of the things to prompt and check with, but

there’s some simple prompts that um you know, I’d even be happy to share like go look on your own, right? These tools are

available. Try it out. See what you find. So, I hear you. We’re going to use GPT deep research. $20 a month. That’ll

give me a few of those a month and then I get some information out there. I don’t know. I feel like if I was doing

that me and as I was making a game, I guess how do I validate what I’m

hearing? I don’t know how else to say it. Like I hear that you’re trying to fix. You

don’t want to go back in time and say, “Oh, I wish you made the game this way.” Because of the marketing research we

found. Like if I’m making a game and I’m early on and I do that deep research and then I find something I’m like okay

should I change my whole game based on this like surely there’s a balance where it’s like

what am I I don’t know it’s it’s weird because some of the games like Batro that we mentioned he explicitly said on

a few podcasts like he really he did basically no market research he made a game that he wanted to play and I feel

like a lot of people like oh I would just do that. So when we have that also in our face like hey this worked how do

we combine that with market research like I feel like there’s two opposing forces there.

Well sure and the truth is it’s the exception rather than the norm. Right.

So sometimes you can come up with a game that you have a great hunch about and you have a great feeling about. that you

had referenced to me in the past, Baby and Yellow that was made in a 48 hour game jam, right? Like just some guys,

some people that had an idea and a concept, made a game, got 100 million downloads, like that’s awesome. Like,

and if you and if you have a great idea, absolutely go for it, right? Like, lean

into it. And if you’ve and if you haven’t done that step and you’re already, you know, six months, year, however long in development, that

doesn’t mean like go back to the drawing board. It means take where you’re at now and find the most effective way to

market it. Now, the market research stuff and building a business case, that’s what AAA does, right? Before they

greenlight games, they they have extensive and exhaustive research done

and forecasts built and P&Ls with that account for um taxes, HR, legal, you

know, all the all the fees and things that they have to pay that indies can neglect. I you know, I hear this from

investors. They say that yeah when we see pitches they overestimate how much money they’re going to make uh and they

don’t account for all these other expenses right so uh you should build a business case but if you haven’t gone to

that step it’s not too late just take what you have start from there and then as far as like validation for the game

of course right there’s easy ways to do that in small budgets there’s easy ways to build momentum and get enough data

that you can tell yourself and investors and publishers is look, we have a game

concept and we believe that it’s strong and now we have data to back it up.

Cool. Any good examples? Like have you recommended anyone to like try validate

their game and like any good success stories? So, we we’re signing on some clients now

and and not one that has a game that has yet to be released, but I will give you a case study of a client of ours that

released a game this year. They had developed the game for six years, husband and wife duo, quit their job, uh

went all in on making this game and went through just hell making it. They had so many setbacks, they had so many issues,

but to their credit, they made a great VR game. They did. It was wellreed. And

to their credit, when the game launched, they had influencers pick up the game and they had a lot of traffic come to

the game, come to Steam. Unfortunately, not all of them converted. In fact, a

small percentage of them converted. Why? Because their store page wasn’t

optimized, right? Was not cleaned up and optimized in the way that it needed to be. The capsule art did not read well.

The copy read like dev notes. Uh the screenshots were too bleak and dark. You couldn’t tell what was going on. So, it

needed to be overhauled. But the validation point is they said to me, “Is it over?” We had all the traffic come

in. The traffic’s gone, the sales are gone. We spent all we spent years making

this game. Is it over? You do we need do we need to move on? And stories like

that, it just broke my heart. It it was just, you know, my gosh, like you have been through so much and now you think

it’s over, but it’s not. And that’s the mistake that publishers even make is they think a game is dead. But you can

validate, you can find out, is it the game or was it just the marketing? And

so here’s what we did, right? We uh said, let’s run a very small scale UA

campaign. When I say small, you saying money behind a paid ad, right? Bingo. Yeah. User acquisition. Thousand

bucks. Thousand buck ad spend, right? We came up with a media plan. We came up with creatives. We optimize our page

first, of course, because we drive traffic to there and they’re not converting. Does us no good, right? And

all we said is, hey, let’s clean up your page. That’s not going to hurt anything, right? Like, we’re only going to improve the page. We’re only going to improve

the conversions. This page, this Steam page is going to live forever, right? So, let’s make sure that that’s

optimized and convert and it’s for conversions. Then, let’s drive traffic to it. Let’s drive qualified traffic to

it. So, we found comparables. We did research. We found okay this type of

game has this type of audiences right they are VR they like Arizona sunshine

they like zombies etc etc so let’s target them what type of creative

resonates with them also did research on that we made variants of the creatives we tested it and what we found is that

when we turn the campaign on that we drove traffic they converted the

conversions increased five times drive qual qualified traffic. And we saw 5.3x

return on ad spend. So that means for every $1 we spent on advertisement, they got 5.3 back. That’s net profit after

Valve’s cut and after refunds accounted for. Net net positive.

So you you got a money printer. You’d think so, right? And here’s the

thing. Most marketing, especially UA agencies, would see that data and tell

client, mortgage a house, sell it all, put all in UA, right? Just go all in. If

you’re getting those types of returns, nob brainer. Spin, spin, spin, spin, spin.

Wrong, wrong, wrong. I’m very curious now because we we dug deeper than that,

right? We didn’t just look at the user acquisition data because we come from AAA publishing. We know that it’s not

just marketing, it’s product, it’s analytics, it’s forecasting. So we what

we did is we scraped all of the reviews, we scraped all of the refunds and the

reasons people were refunding and we found commonality and we said, “Oh, well

guys, there’s some easily fixable things these you could have a patch, right? You

can have a patch. you can address these issues and then we can turn it into a

little marketing beat like a relaunch and then we turn on user acquisition and then that 5.3 number could go higher

right we can have even more oh and by the way we also informed them this VR market

down in 2025 right however it’s forecasted to go up by Q4 and that

momentum will continue into next year as more as more devices are available prices come

etc. So, we said, “Hey, what we should do is some steady state UA. We’ll do a

beat around this and then we could do a DLC drop. We could do an expansion drop

whenever the market’s expected to pick up, right? So, we went beyond just the the flatout user acquisition. We were

able to validate their game, see that it that it was profitable, that the metrics were there, make strategic

recommendations on what to do with their game, and then Yeah. Mhm. can be a money

printer, right? It’s a game that they made, they put all the time in. Why not? Why not sell it? It’s going to be in Steam. Love it. Beautiful. So,

it’s almost like you validated that now it’s worth putting more money into the game to make those numbers a lot higher.

I’m wondering for games like that like I have no comparable like what return on ad spend you typically get but is that

typical like a 5x seems quite high to me but can that go even higher like is that an expected result

that is extremely high and it’s why we also caution right we don’t and we don’t communicate to client we would never say

oh this is how it’s going to be forever because there’s creative fatigue you go through the audience right like you if you send the same audience the same ad

like eventually that well will run dry That’s why we say, “Hey, instead of us just opening the floodgates, let’s be

strategic about the spend.” Uh the the truth is when it comes to return on ad

spend, it’s tricky, right, with attribution. Attribution is a challenge in the marketing world. You don’t know

if they saw an ad, if that drove them to click. Because sometimes they’ll see an ad and then they’ll go off somewhere

else and they’ll see social media and they’ll go off somewhere else and they’ll see a a newsletter and then they’re in Steam and they So, which one

do you attribute it to? Right. So, to the best of our ability, we offer directional guidance on that. Um, and as

far as like most games and most campaigns, it varies, right? Like, uh, some may have like a one to 1.5x return

on ad spend, right? Um, that that could be good. Um, so as far as like

comparables, it’s really high. Do I think that would sustain at that clip? Probably not. Uh, but we would monitor

and measure those results and adjust strategically and accordingly.

Beautiful. I’m actually, this is very maybe telling for me cuz I’m not in the

games industry. I just interview people, but for some reason I’ve interviewed so many marketing people and everyone’s talking about the organic side of

marketing where it’s like trailers, it’s like content on, you know, socials. And

for some reason, I’ve not spoken to someone who’s just blatantly talked about like let’s put money behind unless it’s mobile. Mobile mobile I hear it all

the time. But for like a PC console game, I just haven’t heard that conversation much at least online. I’m

I’m wondering is do you find that with indies as well? Like do people just forget that they can do this? Yeah. They don’t they do not consider it

because they think that that they think that user acquisition equals tens of

hundreds of thousands of dollars of millions of dollars, right? That’s what they think. They think that

uh that’s what it takes. But the truth is what’s great about paid UA and why we recommend it in instances is unlike

unlike organic you can get data quick with organic it’s reliant upon the

algorithms of that platform right how good is your content how big is your following on Tik Tok how many people

scroll through your stuff right like boom boom boom boom boom right so the that you are reliant upon how good your

content is your following etc with UA you can get very quick signal and very

quick data with exactly the audience that you want. And an often overlooked strategy, by the way, is doing a small,

we’re talking like 500 bucks, a small AB test, that means testing multiple creative variants for capsule art,

right? So, yeah, cuz like if that changes the conversion by like five 10%, that could be like literally double. Like, yeah, I

just clock in a lot now. Like, if you were only doing organic and organic is killing. If you just AB tested creative

using paid UA and then the organic stuff like you said the capsua is all going to be that much better and it’s literally

impossible to get that feedback loop as fast unless you’re doing paid UA.

Yeah, I’m going to tell you some smart really really smart studios are going

even further when we talk about validation of the game. I know a startup

that has uh founders from big tech. Um I don’t

want to give away their name because I’m gonna give away some of their strategy here. Uh but they they got a big big

like $30 million raise this year and they are making games

using AI. And guess what they’re doing before they make their games? They’re running UA on

using generative AI assets of concepts. Here are concepts that we think would

work for this game and before we make the game, we’re just going to see how the market reacts to it. So, they run

literal fictitious games with madeup stuff to help validate their

game before they spend. You know how expensive games are to make, right? They can cost millions of dollars. So before

they get to that point, what’s going to kill you for a few thousand dollars on a UA test to validate, right? You will

save so much time and effort um versus the the long slow clawing of organic on

social. Now Harry, before we go, I I do want to interject real quick before we go on to

that is that I’m not dismissing organic social. So please do not take that away.

Organic social can and should be part of your marketing strategy.

I’m in the indie. I’m hearing you drone and I’m like, “Okay, I’ve got an idea.

I’ve got something going. Let me do a paid UA validate it.” Cool.

I don’t know. I’m just so curious. Like it’s a fictitious game. Then I’m guessing they say, “Hey, this game is

not out yet. Join the wait list.” Like what are they doing with that data? I don’t know. Like can someone take how

would you if someone’s listening to this like John I want to try that should they like is that only for the AAA guys or

I think if you I think if you had the budget and by the way they’re not AAA they are not AAA they are they are a

what I would consider more like a triple I

um studio if you have the if you have the budget to do it. Yes. And where do you drive

them? You drive them to a landing page where you capture their email. Why do you capture their email? Because again, it’s a channel. It’s a channel. You have

data now and you can message them. People still check their emails. People still check their emails. And

again, unlike organic social where you’re dependent on algorithms to

determine whether you know who sees your stuff and when, you can directly drop

something into their email box of, “Hey, remember that game that you saw that you were interested in? Guess what? It’s

available. Guess what? We just announced it. Congratulations. That’s right. Or or

remember that game that you that interests you. Oh, we we made another game, right? We made another game very

similar to this and check it out. Trailer information, screenshots, press releases, yada yada yada yada, all the

good stuff. And then you have life cycle marketing. You have life cycle marketing with email. It’s often overlooked, but

it’s extremely effective. We have entire teams at AAA publishing. Entire teams.

All they do is emails. Why? When a game’s on sale. When a game’s on sale, when there’s a new update, guess what?

You’re getting an email dropped in. Hey, guess what? You like that game? It’s on sale now. Yay. Hooray. Happy days. As

you would say, Harry. Happy days. Exactly. Love it. I want to take us to wish list now cuz I just

released a podcast and he had a and I quote, “If your game has 50,000 wish

list or more, a publisher will take you very seriously.” So, I’d like to let’s take that statement.

If I’m looking to grow wish lists first, what are people getting wrong about growing their wish list? When you talk

to them, what do you keep seeing? Like, hey John, I’m growing my wish list. What are they doing wrong? They over reliance on organic.

Over reliance on hoping that influencers will pick up their game. Um, and then

also what they do not take into account is how long it took to get those wish

lists. If you get 50,000 wish lists, but it took you 10 years to do it, right?

The people that wish listed on year one probably are not going to care about you

much much later, right? So the the wish list number is while it’s a metric,

right, that can turn heads, why why does it turn heads? Why is it important? Because of Steam algorithms, right? You

need 20,000, 30,000 wish lists to really cross that barrier on the Steam platform

to get kicked in to like popular, upcoming, etc. And you know, Steam obviously is what the number one place

where people discover your games. So, that’s why it’s so important. Um, but as far as like driving wish list, again,

it’s not just one thing, it’s multiple things. You need multiple touch points. All right. So, great example when we

talk about the funnel, Coca-Cola. Coca-Cola is the most popular drink on planet Earth. Everyone knows what

Coca-Cola is. But guess what? They still run Super Bowl ads. They still have billboards everywhere you look. Drink

Coca-Cola. Why? Because it’s part of the funnel. It’s part of awareness, brand equity, right? They know. They know that

you need to be in the hearts and minds of people. And just doing it for a launch isn’t enough. You need to have a

life cycle marketing plan. And you need multiple touch points because how many times does it take the average consumer

to see something before they make a purchasing decision? Seven. Seven times.

So they just see one one person streaming it. Okay, cool. I’m

interested. If they see their friends talking about it, okay. If then they see

it on their social media feed, oh, oh, everyone else is talking about it. Then they see an ad for it. Oh man, I can’t

miss this. Right. So, the point is you need multiple multiple touch points. And

just putting all your eggs into one basket is why so many indies fail. They view it as a checkbox. I I just need uh

x amount of followers or I just need uh this this streamer to pick it up. That’s all I need. Then my marketing is done,

right? No. All righty. you raise a cool point like the with Coca-Cola, one of their

marketing strategies which I find really cool um especially in countries like mine in Cyprus is they pretty much give

for free the name of the kiosk and it just says like candy break and it’s massive

Coca-Cola. They also give them typically a free Coca-Cola branded machine and

they will put their own drinks in there. It’s like subsidized, I guess, stuff. And I’m curious in the game world, are

there just like kind of maybe some neat tricks like maybe using Discord or Reddit, something that I don’t know

where people are just completely ignoring that that’s a complete like user acquisition channel? Like you

mentioned, you were doing market research, Reddit, Discord, and LinkedIn. Is there a place where games get

discovered that people just didn’t realize is a thing? I think like the easiest lowing low lowest hanging fruit is understanding

where your audience is most active and meeting them there, right? Like it’s not some secret. It’s I’ll give you cozy

gamers for example. Cozy the cozy gamers uh well they

actually usually hang out in Facebook groups because they’re well they’re moms

or females on Facebook. They skew older um you know they got kids or whatever.

they just need like a something to turn their brain off and like do some farming and like build their house and etc.,

etc., etc. And uh these studios sometimes don’t think about that, right,

of like a Facebook group? Why would I I want to be on I want to be on Twitch, right? I want I want I want somebody on

YouTube to stream my game. Well, that’s not necessarily where the audience is going to be, right? Uh, and Reddit

Reddit’s super powerful. But the mistake that studios and developers make is they

treat these channels as a advertisement self-promotion channel.

Yeah. Versus an organic channel, which is exactly what it should be treated at, not a, “Hey everyone, you never heard of

me. Go buy my game right now. Go wish list out.” Right. So, what’s the right way, John? What’s the right way, John? Because I think a lot of people hear that and like, “Okay,

how do I quote unquote blend in? Should I be trying to blend in? Should I be like feel like a cozy gamer and then

talk about my game? Or should I I’ve had I’ve heard of some people say, “Hey, check out this game. This looks really

interesting when it’s just your game, but you kind of pretend to be someone else.” Like, what’s the what’s the strategy?

Be authentic. Be real. Engage. Engage with people. Don’t just post when it’s about

yourself. you for every one time you post about yourself, 10 times you should

be talking about other people and asking them questions, seeing what do they like. Hey, uh, I see this post on

Facebook talking about another game. What’s your favorite feature about it? Why do you like what do you love about

this game so much? Why do you keep coming back for more? What’s your favorite thing? If there was another

game that came out today, what what do you wish would be a part of that? Right? And so we tal I talked to you about

seven times, right? Same thing in community. When people see your name more frequently and they see that you’re

not just there to sell them stuff, then you become part of the community because you’re act you’re engaging with them

authentically. And the thing is with gamers, especially hardcore gamers, is that they’re tough to get onto your

side. They’re very critical. But once you do, once you’ve earned that trust, you’re Gucci, as you would say, until

you burn it, of course. But, you know, it it’s it’s you can be one of them by just being yourself. Stop. Don’t try to

be a brand. Don’t try to be a call to action. Just show up. It’s the same

thing that’s worked with me for as I’ve built this business. When we started talking about Skill Tree, I made Reddit.

I in the two months that we’ve had that Reddit account, I’ve made one one post

about Skillree Marketing. And the rest of the time how we got our first clients, I was just asking questions.

Just asking questions, just giving feedback. Cool trailer. Think it think it could be a little punchier if you did

this, this, or this. Cool game. Uh, I think you’re missing out on this communication, but I really like it. I

think this is really cool. Right? Just being honest with people and then instead of skill tree marketing showing

up, buy our services, buy our services. It’s like, oh, these dudes have been giving out free advice and help. It’s

why it’s right now, Harry, when I talk to you about what I do with market market research. Well, go do it. Like,

it’s why I post on LinkedIn that my most popular content on LinkedIn is not me talking about Skill Tree and go buy our

services. It’s not what’s getting people in the door. What’s getting them in the door is being authentic, telling them,

“Hey guys, like I know your pain. I feel for you. I know how hard it is to market

a game. I know that you don’t have much budget. You don’t know what to do. But there’s good news. The good news is that

here’s how other games have done it and think through how you can apply that to your game.

Yep. Love it. Cuz the ideas of basically asking the community, hey, what features do you

like? Cuz then like, you know, I’m building a cozy game. I can already see that if someone came into like my

community, you would obviously engage with that. It’s like, ah, the person’s building a game. But literally, if the same person said, hey, come play my

game. I would get the ick. And it’s so funny because it’s just such a small difference, right? Yeah. And and like being real with being

real with people like telling them like, “Hey guys, like here’s this is hard. Like we’re working on this. We’re trying

to figure like ask for feedback. Ask for feedback. Show them people are afraid.” So some devs are afraid to show their

game off too early. And I think they’re wrong. I think that they should show off the the dirty, ugly,

horrible side of their game because it makes them human. People recognize that.

like and and you obviously like disclaimer like hey we’re working on this it’s work in progress like be real

with people tell them about your journey and just like on LinkedIn that’s what so many people neglect they don’t talk

about their journey and their story because it humanizes you people connect with other human beings they understand

that like yeah man I know like games are tough right like I I get it like they

they resonated with that’s why the husband and wife duo why so many people were cheering them on and picked up

their game because they that message that story of like we was that in the ad creative?

No, no, no, no, no, no.

And why was it not in the Why was it not in the ad creative? Because that story in the UA, it’s hard

to tell when you have 15 seconds with somebody, 3 seconds with something. They

they they decide within 3 seconds whether or not they’re going to watch. Um, and so trying to like tell the

hero’s journey in 15 seconds, it’s not the place for that. Where what’s that?

Oh, sorry. I was so excited. Yes, it is. It is on the Steam. Very cool. Once you see the ad and you go to the

Steam page, yes, Pam and Steve, the husband wife duo, they have gone all in on their passion game and it’s really,

really cool and it’s, you know, here’s why you should play it. It’s on the Steam profile. The hero’s journey of the developer. interesting

cuz yeah cuz obviously I I talk about that from LinkedIn but I never thought about Steam page and yeah it makes sense

like you want to hear the story right of how the sausage got made because people especially like indie

gamer fans they love it right they they love like when people share like their

struggle and how hard they worked and how much they care and it’s why they they by the way built so much trust is

because they had a discord and in that discord they responded quickly to every bug, every complaint,

everything that anyone ever had come through. Gosh bless them. They They were

so sweet to these people that would just come in and rip their game to shreds and they would be like, “I’m so sorry. We We

know this is a problem. We’re working on fixing it.” They were human beings. And the the people that complain it and when

they get that level of response of there is another person that really cares about this on the other side and they

listen to you and your complaint and they validate that feeling and tell you we know we want to make it better for

you. that goes so much further than the corporate boilerplate that you see,

pardon my French, uh that you see from bigger bigger

studios, bigger publishers where it’s very cuz on mobile games, so I’m more of a

mobile player. I don’t really play much on PC anymore. So, I see on these big Momo games, every response to a

complaint, it’s like, “Hey, so sorry that that is happening. Would love to look into it. Please email support at

blah blah blah.” And it’s just the same reply to all these people. Um

Mhm. Yeah. Yeah. I’m just I’m just thinking now like surely it makes sense to put some

money behind and just like have that be actual answers and then

cuz what you’re saying just makes so much more sense, right? 100%. And and granted like those studios, they have a process, they have

an intake form, they have to track it, they have tickets, they have to assign somebody to it, like but they also have

like a huge customer service team that manages this stuff, right? And they feed that they feed that they consolidate

that feedback. by the way, and then give it back to Studio developers to inform

them whether or not they take it. Well, that’s that’s up to the how they prioritize their work because, you know,

the the deep truth is that studios often know that there’s big studios like uh

they often know that there’s issues with the game, but they have other priorities, business priorities, and

they can’t always prioritize the the one thing that a lot of people are complaining about when they have a

feature that that they need to polish and ship. They have uh they need to meet Q4 earnings, right? They need to they

need to drive things are going to drive monetization. They have different priorities versus the small studio that

can have more of that one- on-one authentic human connection. The most

successful Discords that I’ve seen of the studios I’ve been talking with, they do exactly that. They have they respond

and just engage naturally with their fans. This is this is actually funny, John. So

I watched a lot of Batro, watched it and I was like, “All right, I have to I have to play it now.” So I bought it for 10

quid on my phone, started playing it, got a bit addicted, put Super Stupid Man of ours in, and then I just went down a

rabbit hole. I was like, “Oh, let me Who made this game?” And he’s he’s anonymous, right? And I was like, “Ah, that’s interesting.” And then I listened

to a podcast for him talking. I was interesting. And then I saw um news

article that Batro is releasing playing cards and I was like this game gave me

so much. So I just bought 12 I bought 12. So I probably I spent like over 150

bucks on just literally playing cards with the ballot show stuff. And my idea is I will give it to people when I go to

Gamescom. So it’ll be a it’s on the business. And I’m just clocking now. Like I probably wouldn’t have done that if I didn’t go the rabbit hole of ah

it’s this one anonymous guy in Canada who’s publicly said he never wants gambling to take this and he has it in

his will and stuff like I connected with that part of the story which led to me

buying more from him and like taking it back to your story.

I wonder how much buying they’re going to get from their current Discord when they release DLC because they’ve

publicly kind of put themselves out there in that positive way. So, yes, it might help with making the product

better, but also like I don’t know how else to phrase this, but like maybe people forget that your

customers aren’t necessarily one-off, right? They’re customers off the studio. You’re going to get repeat customers, and that’s how you build like a massive

business. Like Ubisoft probably sells Assassin’s Creed, the new one, to the 10

plus years of people playing Assassin’s Creed. So, you’re not just getting customers for one game, you’re hopefully

getting customers for life, you know? That’s exactly what I want to do to help

studios go beyond launching one game to launching two, three, four, five plus

games. Harry, I if if what we do with Skilltree is that

we help studios become sustainable businesses that can hire people, give

them work, make businesses, and turn the industry into a place where

it’s not just a small percent that make money. Do you know how much that would

please me? I I would I would be so thrilled. Yeah, it’s cool. I it’s what I’m

thinking with my business, right? Like my dream is to help people kind of, you know, a lot of people just have amazing

products, but they just can’t do sales or it’s just not in them. And it just takes just tell that story a little bit.

Like that’s all I do. I just take what they already got, tell the story, then boom, they book meets, they get a couple

more clients, and then the business suddenly is profitable. Where before they had the product, but just no one knew about it. And I think there’s a lot

of parallels here with what you’re doing. Completely complete parallels. And it’s

okay. And and the other thing I want to disclaimer like some developers are not the Pam and Steve and Discord responding

to everyone and everything like like the pressure that can be there of like I

don’t feel comfortable talking to people. I’m an introvert. That that’s okay, right? That’s okay. Understand

your weaknesses. Understand the gaps that you have and work around them. either come up with a system where it

works or or bring somebody in to help you, right? Like there there are certain

things that I really don’t want to do and can’t do. Like or organic social,

for example, like I don’t want to do that with Skill Tree. I don’t there there are other folks out there that do

organic social and like we’ll we’ll partner with them. We will partner with them. We will work with them on a

strategy and a marketing plan 100. But like our team’s not equipped to do that,

right? Like we’re we’re not set up for that. Nor do I really want to go into that space. And that’s okay, right? Like understand like you may be a studio and

you may not be great at art. Who what are you going to do? You going to have bad art? No, you’re going to hire

somebody to help you make the art good, right? If you’re willing to spend good money on art or animation or design or

whatever, like same with marketing, like either either you’re going to do it yourself and you’re going to grind it

out, which is possible. It is it is possible. I’m not here to tell you that you you got to hire us or you got to

hire another marketing agency or group to to help you out. Sure, you can do it yourself, right? But if you want some

help, right, it’s there and understand your weaknesses for sure. And I give

this advice quite a lot. Like most agencies, most consultants, the first

call isn’t paid. I can imagine if you’re an ind developer and you chat with three

to four agencies, you’re going to get some a lot of insights and it’s not going to cost you much apart from your

time. Like it’s the biggest cheat sheet basically. Like the way I learned a lot about kind of what I do is

justworked and just asked people, told them what I knew, they told me what they knew. Did that enough times you know a

lot more. And a lot of these people like John, especially anyone going on a podcast, they probably would give you

the kind of 101 of what you need to do on the first chat. And it goes both ways

too, right? Because as I talk to people and network with more people, I learn I

learn the challenges firsthand. Even though I’ve done research, right? Actually talking to other people helps

validate or um disprove that research. And I’ve learned a heck of a lot since

LinkedIn’s picked up and since my calendar has booked up. And there are

folks that I’ve openly talked to that tell me, “John, I don’t have any money. You know, we can’t hire you.” And I tell

them, “That’s okay. I just want to know what you’re going through. I just want to know like where your pain points are.

I want to know where your struggles are at. I want to know what help you need because that helps me cater my services

to help those people in need. Like that that’s what I need to do. I’m I’m trying to help people. I really am. And talking

to your audience, talking to your customer is what’s going to give you more insights than,

you know, any other any other research. which is a great starting point, but like actually like communicating with

people uh goes a lot farther than a spreadsheet and an LLM research 100%.

Question for you. How do you run a new business with eight Chihuahua and three horses in the house?

Well, uh it it’s a challenge every morning uh when the dogs wake up and I’m

on a call like this. On this very call, the dogs decided to go crazy and they’re now barking at my wife who’s feeding the

horses. Uh, and they run and scamper through the house and I have to mute the phone and yell at the dogs. But I I I

love them very much. Uh, I do want to tell you real quick that the Chihuahua are named after video game characters.

We have Pork Peach, we got Kirby, we have Joker from Persona 5. Uh, we have

my favorite dog, Zelda, Princess Zelda. Uh, we have Cookie from Animal Crossing.

Uh, we have uh Bowser. Uh, we we got all the dogs. We got Daisy. Who am I who am

I leaving leaving out here? Teddy. Teddy from Persona 4. Yeah, it’s like roll call with these dogs.

You I like that you forgot one of your Chihuahua’s names. Like it’s not one of your dog name. It’s one of your

Chihuahua’s names. Like when was the decision to have more than one Chihuahua?

on Chihuahua 1 or was like after Chihuahua 3 you were like I guess we got to keep doing this.

Well, uh so my my wife has a Chihuahua and when I met her she she loved

Chihuahua and uh one Kirby is her most precious precious dog and she wanted to

continue the bloodline. Um, so a couple years ago I got her a puppy that was

Princess Peach and we said, “Okay, we’re going to have we’re going to have a litter and then we’ll keep one of them

and uh we’ll find new homes for the rest.” Um, and that will be it. And then

the first litter was four dogs. And well, we we we fell in love with them

and we’re like, we can’t we can’t give these poor little things away.

Uh, and uh, and then for the rest of them, we uh, we’re like, “Okay, we’re

fixing that. We’re fixing Princess Peach. We’re no more Peachits. There no more dogs.” Um, and unfortunately, Papa

Kirby got to her before we had a chance to fix her. And we had we had a chance to do something about it, but, you know,

we’re like, “Well, we can’t get rid of these little puppies. They’re adorable.” Now they’re fixed. There’s no more.

There will be no more. Right. But we it it was it was a snowball effect of

Chihuahua. And I I they drive me nuts, but I love them dearly. I need to see the picture of eight

Chihuahua and three horses. There just needs to be I don’t know if you got cuz

Chihuahua’s got outfits, right? I’ve seen white chicks and you can put outfits on them. And I just imagine the video game outfits on all those doggos.

It would be It would go hard. Oh yeah, 100%. 100%. Zelda has like a

Princess Zelda collar and awesome. So, real talk though, like

you’ve got a family of at least of Chihuahua, right? Uh, and you’ve gone

straight into business. I know what it was like the first couple weeks. Um, this is more of a I guess letter to your

past self, maybe a letter to kind of people out there looking to kind of do their own thing. What would you tell

them? Anything? Oh boy, I’m still learning it. But I think the the the most powerful

thing for me is understanding that it takes a village. That I could have

grinded this out and figured it out on my own. But what has accelerated the

growth of Skillree is recognizing my shortfalls, my weaknesses, the areas

that I needed to improve on, and bringing in people to help, whether they

were advisers or coaches or or mentors or people um and just a

relentless pursuit of improvement of

okay, I feel that this went really Great. But how can I be better after

every call? How can I be better after every campaign? How can I be better? And

how who do I need to bring to help me out when I can’t do it anymore? And

doing that before it it’s too late. Like not waiting until the house is on fire.

um looking in advance and saying, “Yeah, I I need help in these areas and I’m

going to get it and I’m willing to sacrifice, you know, pay or equity to get that help

because I don’t don’t want to do it by myself. It’s it’s really scary trying to

leave a stable job, you know, and go to just all in, you know, when you got a

mortgage and and you know, I pay the bills and, you know, it’s all on me and it’s like I got to keep the lights on, man. Like,

yeah, got to do it. Yeah. Don’t go alone is the most It’s surprising how many quote unquote like

killers and then they’re like, don’t speak to many people whether it’s online or some people like just delay going

into a co-working space. That’s been really useful for me. I’m very lucky. Like I live with all my family and my

brother works in the business and my cousin has a similar business. So three days of the week I’m in a coffee shop and we’re working next to each other. Oh

my god. I just had a realization one day like imagine I did all my work in this little box with this curtain behind me

in my bedroom. I’d go crazy. Like you need to talk to other people. It’s so ah

yeah it’s I don’t know. It’s like therapy but also it makes the business go that much faster. I’m sure you realized.

Yeah. 100% man. 100%. And like I I live it’s I can’t really go to co-working spaces, but that’s why I’m always happy

to take a call and happy to talk to somebody and it energizes me to talk to other people.

I love it. I love talking to other people in the game industry. It’s it’s a true joy.

Beautiful. John, closing up here. anything you feel like we haven’t covered today that you’d like to leave

as a message for anyone who’s a marketer or you know looking to market their game.

I think in this industry today, we need to do a lot more of helping each other out and

understanding, like I said, finding help when you need it and knowing that when it comes to marketing,

it’s the marketing out there has not been great in the indie space. And I’m here to tell you that look, whether or

not you work with us, you know, that’s your call, but there’s help out there. There are experts out there that can

help you. And it does not need to be out of reach of your budget. There are things that you can do. You don’t have

to do it yourself. You can tap experts and people that know that that know how to market a game. They’ve been there.

They’ve done that. Um, lean on those resources. Whether it’s going to other

websites or YouTube channels, fine. Um, but if you need extra support, go for it. Don’t think that that marketing is

this impossible black box that you need to have millions of dollars to achieve and have critical success. You do not.

You don’t. Look at these games that have done tremendous tremendous work and had

tremendous success with very little budget. The schedule ones, right?

Bellatro, right? They didn’t have the same budget as a Hogwarts Legacy, right?

Didn’t have the same budget as a Madden, but they sold a lot of copies

and they did a lot of marketing. That’s the thing I want to clarify. Like it’s not like they had small budget and did

little marketing. They also like Batro specifically massive influencer strategy from the founder. Like if you hear him

talk about it, he was very specific on it. And also Batro has got like amazing organic socials online on Twitter and

whatnot. Like small budget but still a lot of marketing. I think Punk is a very good example as well. Like the marketing

team there, Vampire Survivors, small budget but still loads of marketing. I think it’s another thing to clarify like

they’re not just games which sold themselves through word of mouth 100%. Absolutely. It’s all part of the

marketing funnel that you should be thinking about 100%. Lovely. All righty. John, how do people

get in touch? They can go to our website. It’s skilltreemarketing.gg.

There’s a form there. You can schedule a call with me. Hey, you want to talk? I’m here. Uh you can find us on LinkedIn. We have

a Discord that’s uh only for clients right now. We may open it up. Um and we’re also on Reddit. Uh Skill Tree

Marketing on Reddit. So you can find us LinkedIn, Reddit website, talk to me, talk to our team. We’re looking forward

to it. Beautiful. All righty, everyone. Hope you enjoyed. If you did, send it to

a friend. Consider subscribing. And I’ll catch you all next time. All righty. Bye, everyone.