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Please recommend marketing / PR company

CrocopedeCrocopede
edited in General
Hi.

I have managed to acquire an investment for a game im working on after it was greenlit.
I am looking for a good affordable PR company to help promote my Kickstarter page.

The one i have been in contact with is charging R46 000 for what they say buys me 3 PR pushes. One at launch, halfway and last week of the campaign. They were referred to me by Indie gamer girl. And even though i trust her... i am only skeptical in the sense that this company is based in California. Should they not deliver the money would be lost and legal action would be a waste.

They appear to be somewhat new to the game. Novi Unlimited.

Other agencies are chargin exorbitant amounts from one company even stating that it would cost me R80 000 for them to send out one email.

Thank you for reading.

Comments

  • dislekciadislekcia
    Uh. That doesn't sound like overly expensive in terms of concerted PR pushes. Especially not for international companies...

    Why do you think we focus on making games that sell themselves?
  • CrocopedeCrocopede
    My main concern is not having a customer to ask what their experiences were.
    Which is why i am asking here if someone has dealt with a PR company that they can recommend.
  • damouseydamousey
    edited
    I can't think of anybody to recommend. I don't know people who've ran a successful KS via a PR or marketing firm. I know of people who've run a great KS themselves because the content gained the traction itself; and cases of people who ran unsuccessful campaigns with less compelling content.

    So my take has always just been 'focus on making and showing quality" instead. Sorry if it doesn't help.

  • CrocopedeCrocopede
    Good feedback thank you.

    I did manage to get hold of someone who made use of the company. According to them they only managed to drive an estimate of 3 - 5 000 visits to their campaign.

    I do not always agree with good content sells.
    I have seen campaigns with really terrible games raise crazy amounts of cash, and other pretty awesome games close to AAA status raise nearly nothing.

    But then again my opinion is biased. Games i love other hate. Games i hate others love.

    I think exposure and getting lucky breaks are a big contributing factor.
  • EvanGreenwoodEvanGreenwood
    edited
    There might be a way to calculate how much money your Kickstarter campaign would receive.

    You already have stats for your Greenlight campaign, so if you approach games that both failed and succeeded in their Kickstarter drives that ALSO had Greenlight campaigns, and get data on their Greenlight campaigns, then you should be able to plot how much money your game is likely to raise.

    Once you know that, then you can evaluate how much is worth spending on the campaign (both in money and time).

    Regarding the performance of that PR company: Getting an extra 5000 views to a Kickstarter page might in fact be a good performance. If that game only got 5000 views organically then that PR agency DOUBLED the views that the game received (which is a pretty good performance).

    Obviously spending R50,000 on marketing is only going to be worth it if your game is likely to raise R500,000 (or something like that). If the PR agency doubles your signal when you were already getting 100,000 views, then it's might be worth the money, but doubling 5000 views isn't worth as much (obviously).

    As a disclaimer: I literally don't know what sorcery PR agencies do to achieve their results. Broforce for instance uses http://www.indigopearl.com/ for its PR in Europe and Asia, and I've met the rad people who work there, but I still don't understand their jobs (though their results for Broforce have been excellent, as far as I can tell).
  • bischonatorbischonator
    Hey Crock. We used a PR company to do a press blast during our KS. It was a waste of money and generated no leads. Your best bet is to build your own list and fan base before your release. Look at the Broforce guys, they got 800,000 plays of their game on the web player. As an indie group we need to think about guerrilla marketing and apply those principles.

    - https://www.google.co.za/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=guerilla+marketing&spell=1
    Thanked by 2Elyaradine EvanGreenwood
  • CrocopedeCrocopede
    Excellent feedback. Thank you.
  • cliveclive
    @crocopede

    Hmmm, I have exactly the opposite problem. I have a massive, active fanbase (hundreds and hundreds of fan-created videos on youtube already), got greenlit (finally) ... but just don't have the time to work on getting my game live with my day job sucking my time away and demanding overtime too. *sigh* ... soon ... I hope.

    I'll admit to being curious about where you found investment, if it's a public platform, otherwise don't worry, I understand if you cannot disclose.
  • dammitdammit
    This guy offers some insight with regards to marketing and what PR companies can offer

    gdcvault.com/play/1020365/Indie-Game-Public-Relations-5

    @clive - is it perhaps worthwhile for you to look at outsourcing some of your basic marketing to a freelancer?
  • cliveclive
    @dammit I don't need marketing ;) I need time to setup steam and do the last touchup dev work and build, test & deploy - heh - at this point I'm looking into cloning options for myself.
  • dammitdammit
    @clive - sorry I misread your post initially. I see what you mean now :) Good luck!
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